


Live In Thy Heart, (Maybe?) Die In Thy Lap

by missgiven



Category: Good Omens - Neil Gaiman & Terry Pratchett
Genre: (it's on holiday), (just in the first chapter! emphasis on 'light'), (not sure which one is more apt tbh.), Asexual Character, Asexual Crowley (Good Omens), Aziraphale and Crowley Share a Brain Cell (Good Omens), Experienced Aziraphale (Good Omens), Happy Ending, Humor, Light Bondage, M/M, Miscommunication, Relationship Negotiation, Self-Discovery, Sex, Sex favorable asexuality, Sex neutral asexuality, South Downs Cottage (Good Omens), i mean it's all fluff. even the fights they have are a bit funny., this is a fic about asexuality and having/not having sex
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-09-20
Updated: 2020-12-22
Packaged: 2021-03-07 23:47:37
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 12
Words: 32,725
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26556094
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/missgiven/pseuds/missgiven
Summary: After six thousand years of pining and one mismanaged apocalypse, Crowley and Aziraphale finally have begun their long-anticipated sexual relationship. And it's great! Well, it's fine. It's really, really fine.Mostly.---In which Crowley discovers his asexuality and Aziraphale supports him -- sometimes with disastrous results.An excursion through the relatively new sex life of two immortal beings in love, featuring: bruised egos, horticulture, a shocking lack of self knowledge, implied carnal knowledge of Walt Whitman, and of course, a happy ending.
Relationships: Aziraphale/Crowley (Good Omens)
Comments: 110
Kudos: 165





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Hello and welcome to my first chaptered fic ever. Yay! Please read on in this note for additional content warnings if you're into that kind of thing.
> 
> This is a fic where Crowley discovers his asexuality! Bless. Crowley and Aziraphale have sex before this realization, and Crowley isn't 100% jazzed about it 100% of the time. That said -- there is no coercion whatsoever. Aziraphale believes Crowley is all in. Crowley believes he is all in, and does not understand the complex feelings he's feeling. This jives with my experience of asexuality! But if reading about this could be dicey for you, personally, I just want you to know what you're getting into. They do work it out -- that's the whole fic -- but we do set up some uncomfortable problems that need to be solved, especially in the first few chapters. I'll warn for specific stuff in the end notes of each chapter note as necessary/as requested, including this one.
> 
> This is solidly book verse and I imagine this taking place in the mid 1990s. This date is relevant in later chapters so please imagine appropriately bad clothing as you're reading.
> 
> This is done save the last chapter. I'll update each weekend until I finish the last chapter, at which point I'll probably increase to updating twice a week.
> 
> Absolutely special thanks to my beta reader and sweet husband Theo. [(rennish)](https://archiveofourown.org/users/rennish/pseuds/rennish) Quite literally could not have done this without you.
> 
> I hope you enjoy!! See you on the other side.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Specific content warnings in end notes.

The first several times they had sex, it worked out quite well for all parties.

Well, one could only assume it had. Of course. Aziraphale seemed happy enough about the proceedings each time, and was charmingly besotted and dopey when they were not, ah. Partaking. So it seemed that yes, it had indeed worked out quite well for all involved.

That was to say nothing of the anxiety Crowley felt rolling around his stomach and chest following their activities. Or during. Well, not all the time during. He quite enjoyed quite a lot of it, really, he did. And he felt hardly any anxiety at all each time activities commenced.

And it never felt like _new_ anxiety, exactly, just more like the generic buzz of terror rippling under the surface never fully went away. And he never expected it to, after all, so the fact that it didn’t go away, even during sexual, er, congress, didn’t really seem all that off.

In any case, yes. First several weeks having sex. Really quite wonderful for all involved. Just truly peachy. 

The trouble started after a month or two. Aziraphale had made some overtures into _spicing up_ the bedroom, as it were, and Crowley had felt very excited indeed about those overtures, and so on they went.

They discussed _what sounded exciting_. (Well, Crowley discussed what sounded exciting, being the rather less experienced party. Aziraphale seemed to have ideas from experience. Half of Crowley wanted to be sick at the thought of Aziraphale touching anyone else but him, and half of him was just very grateful that Aziraphale seemed to know his way around a penis because someone needed to for Someone’s sake.)

They — well, Aziraphale — procured some very lovely silk scarves, which were placed carefully into a little box that tucked politely under the bed. Crowley liked to open the box when Aziraphale was otherwise occupied and run his fingers over the water-smooth fabric, enjoying the butterflies he felt when he thought about their eventual use.

One night, they were kissing and kissing on the bed, and Crowley was really having a terrific time. Aziraphale gasped a little when Crowley nipped at his neck, which was thoroughly gratifying. Aziraphale had this way of licking into Crowley’s ear, which made Crowley squirm almost entirely in delight (if also, somewhat, in unpleasant overstimulation). 

“What do you say about those silks,” Aziraphale murmured in Crowley’s ear, having left aside the licking into it for a moment.

Crowley, whose spine was doing something funny as it relaxed after all that squirming, agreed eagerly enough. Or rather he said something that sounded like “nyeaghhh.” It was all the same, really.

“Is that a yes, darling?”

Oh bugger — perhaps not all the same after all. With a good deal of effort, Crowley pulled words together, said, “Ah, um. Yes. Yes of course, angel.”

Aziraphale looked down at Crowley, still panting hard with his head on the pillow, and chuckled a little. Crowley opened his eyes to see the fond look in Aziraphale’s, and grinned up at the angel.

Then Aziraphale was taking the little wooden box out from under the bed, rifling through it, selecting some silks carefully. He took Crowley’s left wrist in his hand, smoothed a length of silk along the inside of Crowley’s forearm, carefully tied a neat knot. Kissed the inside of Crowley’s wrist.

Crowley about melted. The attempt into bondage was off to a cracking good start.

Aziraphale carefully stretched out Crowley’s arm, tied the other end of the silk to the bedpost. Repeated the sensual process on Crowley’s other arm. 

At that point, Crowley really felt nice. The sensation of being underneath Aziraphale — always top quality — was heightened by the restriction of his arms. He felt completely at Aziraphale’s mercy, but in a gentle, trusting sort of way. His throat felt pleasantly tight with some kind of emotion, his tummy all tingly with butterflies.

“There,” Aziraphale said, looking down at his handiwork with a possessive look on his face that really added to the tingly sensation Crowley was feeling. He loved when Aziraphale _regarded_ him.

After that it got on all right, at least as well as it usually did. If not rather better. Until —

“It’s lovely, isn’t it?” Aziraphale breathed, having just finished sucking a mark into Crowley’s hip. Crowley loved the feeling of a mark being left, and the way it looked for days after, but he hadn’t quite decided if the moments of pain just after Aziraphale had finished sucking at his skin were worth either of those particular joys. “Lovely knowing that you want to touch me — but you _can’t_ — ”

With that he lowered his head to the tip of Crowley’s cock, which felt, as ever, very very good. Mostly. It also felt sort of imprecise and a little frustrating in a way that didn’t exactly make sense as Aziraphale didn’t seem to have any of the same problems when Crowley touched _his_ cock.

Crowley was moaning a little, because that was the polite thing to do when having your cock sucked, he had gathered. Also because it mostly felt very good!

In that moment, though, he was rather in his head. It hadn’t occurred to him to want to touch Aziraphale at all. He’d actually been rather relieved he wouldn’t have to, what with the silks. But Aziraphale always seemed quite happy to be touching him. And Aziraphale seemed to assume that, naturally, Crowley would want to touch him back. If that wasn’t quite true, was Crowley a — a bad lover? Selfish? Unthinking? Lazy, even? The lazy piece felt properly demonic but Crowley had, he could admit to himself, never been the most demonic demon in the lowerarchy, despite all the naps. And he was _never_ demonic towards Aziraphale. (Well. Rarely towards Aziraphale, and never with malice.) 

Aziraphale’s careful attentions to his cock, and his big hands stroking along Crowley’s spread thighs, were becoming more and more distracting, even with the faint screaming going on inside his head. 

He grabbed at the silks restraining his wrists and tried to make himself want to touch Aziraphale, which did seem like a logical feeling to be experiencing.

He’d rather fancy a cuddle, to tell the truth, but that felt like a large feeling; general, not specific. Of course he’d like to _be touching_ Aziraphale. That made sense. But he was very happy to be at Aziraphale’s mercy, and felt none of the delicious tension Aziraphale had apparently been expecting him to feel.

One of Aziraphale’s lovely thick fingers slipped between the cheeks of his bottom, brushed against the opening there, and Crowley cried out. He did love this, unreservedly, loved being opened and filled with Aziraphale’s fingers or cock. Aziraphale slid a slick finger inside him carefully, and Crowley rocked his hips onto it, relishing the stretch between his legs and the stretch in his arms and sides as his body jerked away from his restraints. Aziraphale worked that finger _in_ and _in_ , and it was enough, the thoughts running around Crowley’s head went mercifully still, Aziraphale added a second finger and Crowley _came_ around his fingers, into his warm, wet mouth. 

The remainder of that evening was lovely too, mostly. Aziraphale kissed his way up Crowley’s body, kissed his mouth, opened him up enough to slip his cock in him, undid the silks with a brief miracle, and held Crowley in his arms and told him what a wonderful job he had done as he fucked him gently. Crowley threw his newly-freed arms around Aziraphale and held on tightly, let himself be rocked under Aziraphale’s body. When Aziraphale’s hips stuttered into his, Crowley cried out with him, relished the feeling as Aziraphale stiffened against him in orgasm and then relaxed again.

They kissed softly, tiny little kisses over and over that were so soft and warm Crowley felt he could cry. Eventually Aziraphale slipped out of his body fully, rolled over to the side, and curled an arm around Crowley’s shoulders. Crowley cuddled into Aziraphale’s chest gratefully, feeling the strange discomfort kicking around his torso that seemed inevitable after sex. 

Aziraphale kissed Crowley’s forehead, which settled the discomfort a bit. “You were marvelous, my dear,” he said in the soft voice that _did things_ to Crowley.

“Love you, angel,” Crowley said into Aziraphale’s soft chest.

“Mm. I love you, too.”

While it wasn’t common for Aziraphale to sleep every night, he very often fell asleep following orgasm, which Crowley liked to tease him about. (“I do not!” Aziraphale retorted indignantly, and inaccurately, whenever Crowley set to teasing.) He did so then, nodding off with his arm still around Crowley protectively.

It felt nice to be held like this, not that he’d admit to it in impolite society. The general funniness that surrounded Crowley whenever they had sex had not dissipated, however, and the specific distress that he may not, in fact, _want_ to touch Aziraphale — that maybe he was deficient in some way — crept back into residence. He cuddled closer to the sleeping angel and set about willing himself to sleep anyhow.

* * *

After that, though, nothing much came of it, for a while at least. Sex continued, with some regularity. (Aziraphale was insatiable. It was fairly flattering.) The parts of their lives outside of sex continued, if more intertwined than before. They bought a house in the country and set it up to their liking. Aziraphale conceded some points of modernity and minimalism, Crowley conceded to some points of coziness and old-fashioned aesthetic, and they were both the happier for it.

Their retirement to the countryside seemed as idyllic as it was possible to get. Until — well, until it wasn’t.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Content Warnings: Crowley and Aziraphale have sex with some light bondage (Crowley's wrists tied to the bedposts with silks), Crowley is fairly anxious and unhappy about sex in general and in specific, while thinking that those feelings are just what everyone feels all the time, and hangs out in a weird space between putting on a brave face, processing too much, and also sort of kind of enjoying the sex.
> 
> \---------
> 
> Thank you kindly for reading! Looking forward to coming your way with another chapter next weekend. Take good care y'all.


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Content notes in end notes of the chapter.

“That!” Aziraphale shouted, sitting up suddenly.  


“Ahh!” said Crowley, scrambling out of Aziraphale’s lap and staring at him in shock. He’d just been in the process of giving Aziraphale rather energetic head, if you asked him. Aziraphale’s outburst was not the usual kind which followed that sort of activity.

“There it was! What you were doing, just now! What’s going on?”

Crowley blinked at him, heart thudding away. “Going down on you!? It seemed like you were enjoying it? Did I do it wrong?” He _had_ thought it was going well, but still was always concerned he _was_ doing it wrong, actually. He’d always assumed Aziraphale didn’t complain to be polite, but here they were. It figured.

“No, it was lovely as always,” Aziraphale said impatiently.

“It’s always lovely? Really?” Crowley asked before he could stop himself. 

“My dear boy, what in the world is that supposed to mean? ‘ _Really.’_ You must know how well you take care of me.” Aziraphale waved one fine, plump hand dismissively. “Of course it’s always lovely.”

“Oh.” Dismissive hand waves or no, it really did feel like news to Crowley. That was gratifying to hear.

“That’s not what I’m talking about. You weren’t — _there._ When you were sucking me.”

Aziraphale didn’t ever mind being explicit in his language around sex — which was delightful, as far as Crowley was concerned. His cock twitched a little, hearing Aziraphale being so frank about sexual acts. Nice of it to show up to the proceedings, really.

“What in the world do you mean? Course I was there. I was — ah — su— er — em. That. I was there.” (Crowley could never match Aziraphale’s language. _Tant pis._ )

“Oh no you don’t, my boy. Don’t tell me that. It was like you were there in body but not in the least in spirit. It’s not the first time, either! I’ve noticed it many times before. It’s like some essential part of you leaves me while we’re having sex. It’s subtle and I’ve never been sure but I’ve been paying attention and I always check to see if everything’s all right and you always say it is but I’ve had enough, Crowley, and I’m afraid I need you to tell me what’s been going on.”

Crowley opened his mouth. Closed it again. Considered the small lecture he’d just received. Opened his mouth again only to choke on his own spit, which really helped him feel more in control of the circumstances spiraling frantically away from him.

Aziraphale leaned forward to thump him on the back. Fabulous.

“Can we please be. Clothed. For this discussion,” Crowley managed as he got his faculties together. The adrenaline from Aziraphale’s confrontation and his trachea’s attempt at self-sabotage was spinning sickeningly around his body.

Aziraphale tutted and reached over the side of the bed to retrieve the ugly cardigan he’d been wearing earlier that day. “Take this, then,” he said, holding it up with one of the arm holes facing Crowley. Crowley had half a mind to snatch the sweater from him and put it on himself, but made himself submit to Aziraphale’s offered help. He did bat away Aziraphale’s hands, though, when the angel tried to button it up for him as well.

Cardigan done up (and, he hoped, gaping becomingly around his collarbones), Crowley hopped off the bed to find the black pants that had previously been cast aside, and wiggled into them. Aziraphale had settled himself back against the pillows on the headboard, still as naked as in the Garden.

“I prefer to be nude,” Aziraphale said, with all the drama of a _grande dame._ “If that’s quite all right.”

“Fine, angel,” Crowley said. He leaned casually against the wall by their bed. “Now, ah. What’s all this, then?”

Aziraphale sighed, drama still turned up to eleven. “I really need _you_ to tell _me_ what’s all this, Crowley, as I explained.” He re-situated himself elegantly where he reclined against the headboard. Crowley noticed, briefly, that his penis was still mostly hard. Poor man; had to be uncomfortable at this point. Crowley’s penis had given up the ghost around the time of Aziraphale’s outburst.

“I don’t know what to tell you,” Crowley said. “We were having sex. You got upset about something and now we aren’t.”

“ _I_ got upset!” Aziraphale shrilled. “I didn’t get upset. You were — off in your own head or something. It was like getting my cock sucked by — by quite a talented — _automaton!”_

That hurt rather more than Crowley was expecting. He tucked himself more thoroughly into Aziraphale’s cardigan. “Well, sorry about that, I guess.”

Aziraphale shifted again on the bed, shuffling one knee out wider. His penis was much less hard than a moment ago; that was probably for the best for his sake.

“I’m not asking for an _apology_ , my boy,” Aziraphale said. “All I’m suggesting is that you could do me the kindness of explaining why you hold such little interest in fellating me.”

Crowley’s spine felt like it had little ants crawling up it, which made it difficult to think of a reasonable response. He settled on a mulish: “I was interested.”

Aziraphale scoffed at him. That was really a bit rude, Crowley thought. Aziraphale often scoffed around him, and only very occasionally at him, but being scoffed at within a quarter of an hour of sex-having ( _because_ of the apparently lackluster sex-having) was beyond the pale.

“You _clearly_ were not interested,” Aziraphale said haughtily. 

“Well, I said I was,” Crowley said. 

Another scoff, though less pointed this time. “Really, dear, I’ve known you for six thousand years. I might know a thing or two about when you are telling an untruth.” His face softened for amoment. “You know you can tell me what’s happening.”

Unfortunately for Aziraphale, Crowley still had essentially no idea whatsoever what was happening.

“I don’t know why I would keep something from you.” Crowley’s voice was getting increasingly dull and flat and his mind was filling up with far more static than usual. 

“I don’t know why either!” Aziraphale burst out, soft expression gone from his face again. He looked, actually, vaguely panicked. It was around the wrinkles at the corners of his eyes. At another time, seeing that expression on Aziraphale’s face would have spurred Crowley into action of some kind, but as it stood he just retreated further into his head and said, approximately, nothing. He looked away from Aziraphale’s face and started fussing at some pilling on the sleeve of the cardigan.

Aziraphale thumped the bed next to one full hip petulantly. “Crowley! Tell me what’s going on this instant!”

Crowley was picking errant little balls of wool off the sweater cuff one by one. “Dunno,” he muttered to the cuff of his sleeve.

For a moment, the room was still and tense. Crowley _intensely_ hated the turn the evening had taken. The silence reached a moment when Crowley thought perhaps Aziraphale would believe him when —

“ _Well.”_ Aziraphale swept himself up off the bed with no scant degree of melodrama, stood up straight to his not-unimpressive height and scowled at Crowley, who blinked back. Aziraphale snapped his fingers and was dressed again in a flash. 

That more than anything prior told Crowley what trouble they were in. Aziraphale never dressed or undressed with a miracle if he could help it.

“If you don’t wish to discuss the matter with me, Crowley,” said Aziraphale, “I shall be in my study. Have a lovely evening, I’m sure.” And with an air that was mostly self-important but seemed, inexplicably, tinged with hurt, he swept out of the room.

Crowley stared after him, feeling an unpleasant cocktail of confusion, loneliness, and a good deal of hurt of his own.

He really hadn’t thought the sex was that bad.

* * *

After Aziraphale left the room, Crowley felt. Bad.

He hadn’t meant to disappoint Aziraphale by being…in his own head, or whatever he’d said. It was true he sometimes felt a little funny when seeing to Aziraphale, rather more often than he felt that way when being seen to himself (though the funny feelings were by no means constrained to one time or the other). But in any case, even if he felt a little unpleasant knot in his stomach or behind his eyes — that feeling wasn’t worth being listened to. He liked sex as much as the next person. In any case, he did his best to make it good for Aziraphale. _And_ it was always gratifying, too, that Aziraphale seemed, usually, to enjoy his attentions as much as he did.

Crowley really didn’t know what Aziraphale was on about. They had sex together and Crowley enjoyed it (more or less) and until tonight it had seemed like Aziraphale did too. In fact it _really_ seemed like he enjoyed it, considering how often he wanted to be intimate in that way. Tonight was probably the fourth night in a row. And all right, after several days worth of daily sex it did wear on Crowley a little, but. It was fine.

Well, it wasn’t fine, apparently.

His stomach felt like it was all twisted in knots and to tell the truth he _really_ wanted a cuddle. The thought of pursuing Aziraphale, though, after he’d stormed out like that, didn’t sit exactly well either. Aziraphale had been mean about the whole thing, really. And there was probably a good reason, but he hadn’t exactly explained it well to Crowley and likely was still not in a mood to break it down in a productive way.

Probably it was for the best to give Aziraphale the space he needed to calm down, and then after a while Crowley would come to him and they could discuss the whole matter calmly. Crowley would explain very clearly that he _did_ want to have sex with Aziraphale, that he _was_ interested in doing so, and that whatever Aziraphale had perceived was just a momentary blip. And if he did all this over an indulgent French dinner more’s the better. After such a thorough clearing of the air, Aziraphale would likely take pains to make up for being so stroppy — he usually did. It would likely be more sex, but that was fine, because Crowley liked sex, like everyone else.

He resolved to sleep through the next few days, and let Aziraphale have plenty of time to work through his upset. He slunk into the bed, which felt much less cozy than usual.

Falling asleep naturally seemed like it could be a long time coming, but Crowley would have none of that. He resolved to wake after a week or so and shoved his consciousness into sleep.

* * *

“Dearest,” a tentative voice filtered through the dream Crowley was having. He was dreaming about the process of organizing paint colors for the cottage. In the dream, the contractor who’d painted originally had come back insisting he’d painted the wrong color on the walls, and started covering up the carefully chosen dove-grey with a color that seemed to vacillate between terra-cotta and neon orange within the same brush stroke. Crowley was trying desperately to convince the man to stop before Aziraphale found out and got all worked up.

“Darling boy,” Aziraphale’s voice said again, though it still sounded hesitant.

Crowley blinked his eyes open. Aziraphale was sat on the side of the bed, looking down at Crowley with a funny expression on his face, twisting the ring he wore on his left hand around and around.

“Hi,” said Crowley, feeling his stomach swoop unpleasantly as he remembered their fight. “What day is it?”

“Oh, just the next day. Afternoon,” Aziraphale said, voice pinched between false happiness and some kind of deep upset. “Had you meant to sleep longer? I can leave you to it if that’s what you need.”

“Nuh,” Crowley said, sitting up a little and scrubbing a hand over his face. “What is it, angel?”

“Ah,” Aziraphale said. “That is. I had wondered. If you’d like to go down to Brighton. For dinner this evening. I thought we could go to Joshi’s.”

“Thought you didn’t like their curry very much.”

Aziraphale looked away from Crowley, examined his ring as he twisted it. “I have had better curries, yes, but if I recall correctly you said their gulab jamun were they best you had had in years.”

_Ah._ This was the apology, then. Crowley hadn’t been expecting Aziraphale to come to him, least of all with such an offer, and found himself rather touched.

He sat up the rest of the way and kissed Aziraphale on the cheek. “Sweet of you. That’s a fine idea.”

A little color came into Aziraphale’s cheeks. Crowley was overcome with an urge to throw his arms around Aziraphale at that, but if Aziraphale actually felt the need to be the one to apologize, Crowley was going to let him work for it _just_ a little longer. 

Aziraphale did work, too. He made pleasant (if somewhat stilted) conversation as Crowley dressed for dinner, and as they drove down to the restaurant. He even made a small show of opening the restaurant door for Crowley, and pulling out his chair for him. To Crowley’s complete amazement, when they came home that evening, Aziraphale initiated the change into comfortable pajamas, with no suggestion of any make-up sex to be had.

By the time Aziraphale came back from fixing them both a cup of tea, Crowley felt secure and made-up with enough to ask, “Would you read to me? Can even hold me when I fall asleep if you like.” Aziraphale beamed at him and said he would.

Crowley drank his tea while Aziraphale hunted around in his study for just the right book, feeling much more content than he had expected to feel when he went to bed the night prior. Aziraphale eventually came back with a book in hand, and they tucked themselves into bed, Crowley’s head pillowed against Aziraphale’s soft chest. He fell asleep listening to Aziraphale’s deep voice, and just before he drifted off, felt the angel kiss his forehead gently.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Content Warnings -- bad sex that's interrupted by having a fight about the sex. They make up within this chapter but I wouldn't call the make-up best practices.
> 
> \---
> 
> Thanks for reading! Also I'm on tumblr @ missgiven as well if you like. See y'all next weekend!


	3. Chapter 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Hello here we are! Enjoy.
> 
> Specific content warnings in the end notes.

Following their whale of a fight and the subsequent dinner date, things more or less went back to normal. Aziraphale puttered around his study and got lost in reading and translation projects for days at a time. Crowley menaced the garden and decorated the house with only the very best of the early roses. 

Aziraphale often initiated sex; Crowley only rarely did so. There were no more outbursts about Crowley’s lack of interest. Crowley did, however, often catch Aziraphale peering at him curiously when he thought he wasn’t paying attention.

One such occasion occurred after a particularly romantic and prolonged experience in the bedroom in which Crowley, it had to be said, did check out somewhat from the events of the day. At one point Aziraphale was using his fingers on Crowley, and _had_ been doing so for quite some time, and kissing his neck, and Crowley had caught himself thinking of the rose hybrid he had planned and that he’d better get a move on if he didn’t want to miss his chance. He gave himself a small shake and went back to enjoying the sex they were having and thought it was all fine, that his momentary absence hadn’t been noticed. But after they’d finished, he looked up from where he was cuddled up to Aziraphale, expecting to see the angel nodding off, and seen instead Aziraphale looking down at him with that soft, curious look on his face.

“What is it?” Crowley asked. 

Aziraphale stared a moment longer. “Nothing, dear boy,” he said eventually, and gave Crowley a very soft, but very thorough, kiss. It was a _very_ good kiss, properly distracting, and even after it was over it kept Crowley’s mind occupied with how pleasant he felt until he fell asleep a few moments later.

* * *

He wouldn’t have recalled that odd look Aziraphale had given him, but a few days after that particular episode he caught Aziraphale at it again.

He was in his workroom, carefully preparing the anthers he had dried from one specimen to be carefully brushed onto the stigmas of another one, when he felt the distinct sensation of being watched. He looked up to find, of course, that he was right — Aziraphale was stood in the doorway, holding a book in one hand a mug of tea in the other, looking at him contemplatively. 

“What is it?” he asked.

Aziraphale smiled, almost bashfully. “Nothing at all,” he said. “Just admiring you, dear one.”

Crowley’s stomach felt fluttery at the pet name, but he wasn’t going to be fooled again. “That’s not your admiring face,” he told Aziraphale, who tutted aggressively in response. 

“Of course it’s my admiring face,” he blustered. “You’re lovely and I can admire you now and so I do. And that’s what my face looks like when I do it.”

“It’s not,” Crowley said mildly, clearing a space to set the mother plant on his table. “You keep looking at me like that and I know it’s not your admiring face because your admiring face looks besotted and serious and that face you _were_ wearing looks sort of confused and serious. And they’re different.”

Aziraphale busied himself with taking a generous sip of tea. Crowley watched him from behind the rose bush on the worktable. 

“I just wonder,” Aziraphale said eventually, haltingly. “When we’re….That is, it seems to me that I….are you sure….”

“Angel, if you have something to say to me, you can say it,” Crowley said, starting to feel like something bad was coming his way and not liking it one bit. “I’ve got work to be getting on with.”

“Of course you have,” Aziraphale said in a rush. “It’s all fine, really, my love.” He came over to Crowley at his worktop and kissed him on the corner of the mouth, which was Crowley’s especial favorite and truly a low blow in terms of distracting him from Aziraphale’s strange behavior (not least of all because it worked so well). 

“Best of luck with your hybrid,” Aziraphale said, and darted off while Crowley was still dazed enough from the soft kiss to let him get away with it.

“What on earth was that?” Crowley demanded of the rosebush in front of him. 

“Insufferable, is what it was,” he answered himself, grabbing the jar he’d let the anthers dry overnight in.

He selected a promising bud to mate with the anthers he’d collected and started yanking off sepals and petals alike. The task was small and fiddly and well suited to soothe his current batch of nerves.

“You know,” he said, as he carefully clipped the stamens away from the bud he’d chosen. “You lot are much cleverer than the humans. You don’t even need to make any effort to reproduce. Just all happens, _wham_ , in house, doesn’t it.”

He dipped a paintbrush in the dried anthers, painted them on to the stigmas he’d left in the rosebud. “Even all this extra effort — _I’m_ the one doing the work, aren’t I? You don’t need to get anything _up_ or _wet_ and _keep it that way._ Much tidier, the way you reproduce, and I imagine less energy.”

“Of course,” he said in the voice he’d carefully cultivated to terrify plant-life, “You will put in the work to produce me a viable hip. I know you wouldn’t want to disappoint me.” The bud seemed to tremble as he tied on a label, which was only right and proper of it.

Unfortunately for Crowley, as much as he liked to talk and mutter while he worked, he didn’t often like to make meaning of that talk. This was a shame.

He cleaned up his space from the work on the rose hybrid and moved on to his next task, and altogether failed to consider the implications of anything he’d said.

* * *

A few short days after the strange exchange they’d had when Aziraphale stood in the door of Crowley’s workroom, The Sex Thing really came to a head.

They’d been having sex with their usual regularity which, Crowley was coming to the point of things where he could admit this, was really too often. It was every other day _at least._ Aziraphale was just as insatiable as ever and it was too tiring to be properly flattering anymore.

It was still fine, of course. Everyone liked sex, and Crowley was a demon, so there was no question of whether or not he liked sex like everyone else. It was curious that Aziraphale could keep this pace up, but this unpleasantness must just. Be what liking sex was like. Feeling vaguely obligated and only half enjoying things.

Anyway. It was fine.

At least it was fine until Crowley forgot himself and let out an annoyed little sigh in the middle of their sexual encounter.

Aziraphale had come up behind Crowley and kissed his neck — and Aziraphale was _very_ good at finding the spots of Crowley’s neck that were most sensitive, and Crowley had shivered, because see? Crowley _did_ like sex. And Aziraphale had said to Crowley, “My dear,” and kissed his ear in the way that he loved but also gave him the shivers, and then had kept talking, and said, “I’d quite like to feel that lovely cock of yours in me tonight.”

And Crowley had felt the feeling which he was certain had to mean desire, but if he had to put a word on it himself, felt more like apprehension.

He’d agreed readily enough and then they were on the bed and kissing and so forth. Clothes had come off. Aziraphale had got on his hands and knees and faced away and Crowley had covered his fingers in lube and, well. Got to work.

It wasn’t that he didn’t like touching Aziraphale. It was just that. The combination of the wet lube surrounding his fingers and the pressure of Aziraphale’s body squidging it all together was. Well, Crowley couldn’t understand how Aziraphale gasped and sighed about touching Crowley in this way, was all, but he did, so he must enjoy it, and likely Crowley just wasn’t _getting it,_ wasn’t understanding how captivating it was to touch someone, or something like that, and so ought to keep trying. Any minute now, Aziraphale would be opened up enough that he could take his fingers out and give them a surreptitious wipe and stop them itching as they dried.

_Just a minute, then,_ he’d told himself, when Aziraphale had moaned something about how delicious Crowley’s fingers felt and didn’t he think he could put his whole hand inside.

Crowley’s hand felt _bad_ in a way that was somehow unquantifiable and he _needed_ it to feel normal again and he’d been moments away from that normal feeling but Aziraphale wanted _more_ and Crowley couldn’t help himself, he gave a little huffing sigh of frustration.

Aziraphale’s body, which had been writhing in something Crowley supposed was pleasure, stilled awfully and suddenly. Crowley stilled his own hand but it didn’t seem like quite the thing to remove it from Aziraphale. He wasn’t sure what he should do.

“Well, my dear, don’t put yourself out on my account,” Aziraphale said in his most posh voice, muffled slightly by the pillow his cheek rested on.

“I’m not put out,” Crowley said very quickly. He brought his free hand up to Aziraphale’s hip and stroked it soothingly. He wondered if he should remove the hand currently lodged up Aziraphale’s bottom.

Fortunately (unfortunately?), Aziraphale made that choice for him, and slid forward off Crowley’s fingers with a truly shocking amount of dignity. Crowley watched in something close to horror as Aziraphale slowly got up off the bed and went to dress himself again. 

“If you don’t find me _enticing_ enough for you,” Aziraphale said as he buttoned his shirt up slowly, head tipped down to watch as he did up the buttons, “That’s quite all right, of course.”

Crowley spluttered. “Of course you’re enticing!” he said.

Aziraphale didn’t say anything, but looked incredibly pained as he continued dressing.

“I want to have sex with you!” Crowley said, feeling panicked. “I do!”

Aziraphale looked at him balefully. “I heard you _huff_ when you were penetrating me with your fingers. I know what it sounds like to have an enthusiastic partner, Crowley, I’ve had enough sex over the years to know that at least.”

Well, there it was. 

“Right, I know, of course you have,” Crowley said. “Course you’ve had _dozens_ if not _hundreds_ of young men to — to suck your cock and bugger you on request! Excuse me for falling below expectations.”

Aziraphale scoffed, but it didn’t sound like his heart was in it. “You, of the two of us, could never fall below expectations, darling,” he said, and then he just. _Left the room!_

What on Earth was this about?

He couldn’t process though, not really, not with Aziraphale’s sweater-clad back walking away from him and refusing to engage. His heart was thudding like mad in his chest and Aziraphale _was walking away from him!_

He stopped long enough to snatch his dressing gown from the back of the bedroom door — he still couldn’t have difficult conversations in the nude, and certainly not if Aziraphale was clothed — and padded out after Aziraphale. 

“What in the world does that mean?” Crowley shot at Aziraphale’s back. 

Aziraphale stopped outside the door to his study, hand perched on the doorknob. He would not turn to look at Crowley, just sighed again and said, “Nothing, my dear,” and let himself in.

Crowley would not stand for this. He pushed into Aziraphale’s study after the angel, refusing to let Aziraphale off that easily.

“I’m sorry I’m not as good in bed as your other lovers!” Crowley cried as he slammed into the room, tailing Aziraphale to where he sat at his desk. Any decorum he’d previously possessed was all but gone, but what could you do.

Aziraphale still would not look at Crowley, just continued on slowly with inexorable movements as he reached for his glasses and the first book his hand lit on, all as if Crowley was not there. 

“Aziraphale!” Crowley shouted, and actually — _most egregious indignity!_ — stamped his foot.

Aziraphale actually looked up at that, looking over his superfluous eyeglasses and regarding Crowley dolefully. Crowley felt an instant rush of relief that he had Aziraphale’s attention again, even if the angel was looking at him like that.

“I’ll thank you, dearest, to avoid being cruel,” he said severely, and made to look away again. 

Crowley manfully bit down a wordless wail that threatened to erupt in the face of Aziraphale ignoring him again.

“For _anyone’s sake_ , Aziraphale, how in the world am I being cruel?”

“Must you drag this out, Crowley?” Aziraphale asked. He was still looking at Crowley, though.

“I’m not the one dragging it out, angel! I’m _sorry_ I disappointed you. _Please_ will you just talk to me about it, though. I’m sorry.” Crowley was stood by the side of Aziraphale’s desk stupidly. It felt like there was a great chasm between them he couldn’t cross, like his body was shutting down without Aziraphale’s full attention and he couldn’t do anything about it but stand there and squawk. 

Aziraphale laughed a little, sounding absolutely heartbroken. Crowley had properly no idea what was happening.

“It’s perfectly all right that I don’t measure up to your standards, dear,” Aziraphale said eventually. 

“Of course you do,” Crowley said immediately. “What are you talking about.”

Aziraphale laughed again. “I just mean you could have anyone you wanted, really. Pity you’re with me of all people.”

“I. Aziraphale. Wha. What are you _saying._ I’m sorry. I’m sorry I sighed tonight — ”

“But it’s not just tonight, is it, Crowley!” Aziraphale finally blazed to life before Crowley’s eyes, standing up out of his desk chair and towering just slightly over Crowley. “I’m nearly _always_ the one to initiate our carnal relations. You rarely touch me if I haven’t touched you first, and hardly ever _look_ at me. I distinctly recall, come to think of it, it was the last time I tried to talk to you about this and I’d laid myself all out on the bed, completely bare, and you didn’t even look away from my eyes! My lovely cock was still hard and you didn’t care a whit!” Aziraphale’s tirade ended, his grand full chest heaving with effort as he glared at Crowley, waiting for a response.

Crowley, however, just felt confused, and he was afraid it showed on his face. On consideration, all of the things Aziraphale had just said were, well. Completely true. 

He did want to have sex with Aziraphale, though. Didn’t he?

“I don’t know how you could think _you_ aren’t up to _my_ standards,” he finally managed.

“My dear boy, I’ve quite explained how I can think that, just now, you see,” Aziraphale said coldly.

“I’ve never had sex with anyone else,” Crowley said dully. “You’re the only standard I have.”

That shook Aziraphale a little, and his eyes softened. “Ah,” he said. “That’s right.”

“So you’re the only person I’ve had sex with,” Crowley said, pushing on mulishly. “So of course I want to have sex with you.”

Aziraphale’s eyebrows suddenly shot up into his hairline, and his mouth shaped into a round “O” of enlightenment.

“That’s right,” he said softly, as if he’d forgotten that fact until now. Crowley didn’t know how he could forget something that embarrassing, or why it should be such a revelation to him.

Before Crowley could work up another defense, Aziraphale narrowed his eyes at him.

“Why?” Aziraphale demanded.

“What?”

“Why haven’t you had sex with anyone else?”

Crowley’s nose wrinkled instinctively. “Why would I want to?”

Aziraphale said, very gently, “You know, I had taken many men into my bed before we became lovers.”

Crowley’s heart gave a little pang at that. “Yes, I know.”

“All I’m saying,” Aziraphale said, still in that gentle voice, herding Crowley over to the settee, “Is that often people, and indeed ethereal and occult beings in people form, often _wish_ to engage in sexual congress.”

Crowley let himself be set down. Aziraphale sat next to him, rather stiffly unfortunately, and gave Crowley’s dressing-gown-covered knee a little pat. 

“Right,” Crowley said, even more confused now Aziraphale was being awkwardly kind and gentle at him. “Which is why I want to have sex with you.”

Aziraphale peered at him. “ _Do_ you, though?”

“Of course I — ”

“Crowley, if you say that again I shall be very cross!” Aziraphale pressed his lips together and breathed very intentionally in through his nose. Crowley stared at him, feeling lost. “Do excuse me. That is to say. Please think very carefully about what your answer, my darling. Do you truly want to have sex with me?”

The night had gone from bad to worse to utterly bizarre. Crowley tried hard to sit and consider the question.

Oh.

Oh dear. 

That was actually quite an easy answer when one thought about it.

“Oh,” Crowley said. 

“Oh,” Aziraphale agreed, patting his arm consolingly.

“Wait a minute,” Crowley said, turning to Aziraphale, tone accusatory again. “You’re telling me you _like_ having sex _all the time?”_

Aziraphale obviously tried hard not to gape at Crowley, and failed spectacularly. “Crowley. _Yes.”_

“And you _want_ to when we’re _not_ having sex? It doesn’t just feel like…like a…I don’t know, a foregone conclusion?”

Aziraphale shook his head. It was rather patronizing, but Crowley could tell he meant well. “Crowley, no, it does not feel that way in the least.”

Crowley suddenly felt like he might cry, and threw himself at Aziraphale’s chest to hide his face.

“What’s wrong with me?” he asked Aziraphale’s soft pectoral region. 

Aziraphale’s strong arms came up to wrap around Crowley, one hand stroking the back of his head soothingly. 

“Oh, you darling boy,” Aziraphale cooed. “Nothing whatsoever. Nothing is at all the matter with you, dearest.”

“But _everyone_ wants to have sex,” Crowley insisted in a tone that could conceivably have been labeled a wail. 

Aziraphale laughed at him again, but this time it was soft and kind. “Darling, you must know that isn’t a bit true, mustn’t you? I’ve met many lovely people, human and ethereal alike, who didn’t wish to partake. Don’t you recall Brother Simon in that abbey up north? It was a right den of sin, which is why you were stationed there, but he was as chaste as the day he arrived — which is why I was there as well.”

“Just thought you were putting in a little more effort than usual, is all,” Crowley said, sniffing a little.

Aziraphale swatted him affectionately on the bottom. “Well, I wasn’t,” he said. “The man simply didn’t wish to. I would have thought he’d have mentioned it to you, the two of you were so close.”

“Never came up,” Crowley said.

Aziraphale made a considering noise. “No, I suppose it wouldn’t have.”

“How do you know that’s why he was chaste?” Crowley asked, suddenly suspicious.

Aziraphale cleared his throat. “Well, it just. Came up in conversation.”

Crowley glanced up from where he’d hidden his face under Aziraphale’s chin to see a look that was equal parts shifty and sanctimonious.

“You didn’t!” Crowley said.

“He was very handsome!”

Aziraphale was more or less asking to be laughed at, and Crowley obliged, until Aziraphale had little choice but to join him.

Once they’d quieted, Aziraphale drew Crowley closer into his side. “Crowley, I feel it may be necessary for me to make an apology,” he said awkwardly, petting Crowley’s back. “It was never my intention to coerce you. I _am_ sorry I never noticed what was going on sooner, and I’m terribly sorry if I ever forced you into anything you didn’t want to do.”

Crowley sat straight up and looked at Aziraphale, right in the eye. “You didn’t force me at all.”

“But if you don’t — ”

“I consented, Aziraphale. Every time. The whole time. Even if I didn’t enjoy myself the same way you did, you didn't force me and I still consented.”

“Yes, but — ”

“Do I not have agency to consent to sex?” Crowley demanded. He didn’t like this line of conversation much at all. Aziraphale could certainly be a bastard but he wasn’t _that_ kind of a bastard, not by a long shot.

Aziraphale frowned at him. “I believe we may need to speak more about this,” he said.

“Later, if you like. But I consented the whole time.” He stood up and held a hand out to Aziraphale, helping him up from the settee. 

“I need a sleep after all this,” he continued. “I don’t — that is, will you — ”

“I’d like to hold you,” Aziraphale said, mercifully reading Crowley’s thoughts. “While you do.”

They made their way back to bed and changed into pajamas, bumping shoulders and knees as they did so, neither willing to go more than a step or two away from the other.

They settled in bed, Crowley tucked up into Aziraphale’s body, feeling secure and warm and held. Aziraphale kissed his ear softly, chastely, with no suggestion of heat behind it. 

“Darling,” Aziraphale said after a few quiet moments, when Crowley was beginning to settle closer to sleep, “If you don’t wish to make love, we don’t have to ever again.”

And everything felt so soft, and Crowley was so exhausted, and so grateful for the turn the night had taken, and all he said was, “Lovely, lovely angel,” and drifted off to sleep.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Content Warnings: bad sex that leads to a fight (this is the last time that happens in this fic I promise); insecurity; internalized acephobia for a second.
> 
> \---
> 
> Thanks for reading! I'm @missgiven on tumblr as well if you'd like to come say hello or anything.


	4. Chapter 4

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Content Warnings at the end as usual!
> 
> Sorry to miss a weekend update...grad school, am I right?
> 
> There be research in this chapter. Remember I said this is book verse, so about mid 1990s? The attitudes in this chapter towards asexuality (positive! but different than we talk about it now) reflect that. The end note also includes some discussion of my research because I just thought it was so fun.
> 
> Also there's a joke in this chapter that goes with my husband's insistence that Aziraphale is one with Siegfried Farnon from All Creatures Great and Small. Just. Just putting that out there before you read.

Following his little realization, Crowley was a new demon.

It took some time, of course. The morning after their botched attempt at sex, Crowley awoke expecting to feel dreadful, so he did, but Aziraphale was attentive and sweet and brought him coffee in bed, then suggested a drive around the coast (during which the angel complained not even once). 

That evening, Crowley caught Aziraphale _Looking_ at him as he changed into pajamas — well, mostly at his bottom. Crowley involuntarily tensed up a bit, expecting the look to be a prelude to more sex, but Aziraphale tore his eyes away to give a warm, friendly smile that was almost entirely genuine.

“Please don’t worry, my dearest,” he said. “No lecherous looks from me. I’ll be a saint for you, Crowley.”

Far from feeling reassured, Crowley frowned. “I don’t need you to be a saint. Least of all for me." Aziraphale blinked at him. 

Crowley crawled under the covers, feeling small.  "I don’t think I like you talking like that,” he added.

He curled up on his side in bed, pulling the fluffy duvet around his ears and feeling shockingly miserable. The day had actually turned out to be quite a good one, but now it suddenly felt like he was a balloon that had got all the air let out of it.

Aziraphale sighed and said “oh, dear.” Crowley could practically hear Aziraphale wringing his hands before the bed dipped and he found himself enveloped in angelic arms.

“I’ve gone and made another mess,” Aziraphale said into the back of Crowley’s neck, then kissed it once, sweetly. Chastely. 

Crowley let himself melt into Aziraphale’s arms a little. “I don’t even know what it means that I don’t want sex and you do, but I don’t think being saintly or not has anything to do with it.”

“Mmph,” said Aziraphale, pulling Crowley even more tightly to him. “Quite right. I misspoke.”

* * *

After that, though, things were more or less dreamy. Crowley hardly ever caught Aziraphale looking at lasciviously. There were no more wandering hands when Aziraphale passed him in the hallway or when they cuddled on the couch in the evenings. Even the kisses they shared changed in nature — rather than turning heated in a matter of seconds, any kiss now was brief and sweet. 

Crowley hadn’t even realized the kind of tension he’d been holding at the mere thought of kissing Aziraphale until he wasn’t doing it all the time anymore. After a few days of sweet, light kisses, when Crowley could even feel himself somehow getting annoyed with _that_ level of physical intimacy, he felt bold enough to say to Aziraphale, “What if you didn’t kiss me on the mouth today?”

Aziraphale beamed at him. Didn’t hesitate at all. Just said, “Of course that would be all right. Would it still be all right for me to kiss you elsewhere?”

And Crowley nodded.

And Aziraphale said, bringing his lips quite close to Crowley’s forehead, “What about here?” Crowley considered, and said yes, and Aziraphale kissed his forehead.

“Here?” Aziraphale asked, lips hovering over Crowley’s temple. Reflect. Nod. Kiss.

“Here?” Over one sharp cheekbone - yes, again.

“Here?” The corner of the mouth, flirting delicately to “too close” but only more delightful for it.

“Here?” And Aziraphale kept it up, because Crowley was laughing _(not giggling)_ and pressing closer and closer to him, and kissed all over his face until they were both grinning like idiots, limbs wrapped up in each others’ on the sofa. 

It felt delightful to fall into Aziraphale and trust that nothing would go too far. (To even have that articulated for himself: that something was “too far.”) That he could even request something that felt as trivial as specifying where he could be kissed and Aziraphale would not only agree, but agree enthusiastically and find a way to make it even _better._ He had already been happy, living with Aziraphale in their own little cottage, but with these new boundaries in place he felt positively incandescent.

* * *

“Did you know, darling, the humans have a term for the disinterest in sex you seem to share,” Aziraphale said over the indulgent cassoulet Crowley had spent the better part of the day tending to. 

“Do they?” Crowley asked, refilling their wine glasses. 

“Asexual,” Aziraphale said knowingly. “These days at least.”

Crowley wrinkled his nose. “Like asexual reproduction?”

“Don’t be silly,” Aziraphale said. “Like the way they say homosexual or heterosexual. To signify sexual and romantic attraction. The prefix a-, meaning without, but here meaning without attraction, rather than without sex.”

Crowley sipped at his wine, considering. “Fair enough.”

“A few researchers wrote about it back in the ‘70s. Do you recall that Kinsey fellow over in America?”

“Of course,” said Crowley, insulted that Aziraphale had to ask, because Alfred Kinsey had certainly been one of his.

“Well, using his scale, the researchers William Masters and Virginia Johnson named a third orientation aside from heterosexuals and homosexuals — they called them ambisexuals. They responded adequately to sexual stimulation from a partner under laboratory conditions, but rarely maintained long-term sexual relationships in their personal lives and reported markedly fewer fantasies than heterosexuals or homosexuals.”

Aziraphale took a healthy-sized bite of sausage, which gave Crowley time to finish processing the phrase “sexual stimulation from a partner under laboratory conditions.”

“But of course _ambisexual_ isn’t the used term,” Aziraphale continued. “And anyhow because Masters and Johnson used Kinsey’s scale they rather ignored bisexuals and the like. So Michael Storms proposed, around the time the Masters and Johnson study came out, a bilateral axis of sexual orientation, rather than a unilateral one, and his explanation _did_ include bisexuals and asexuals. It’s really very sweet, all the efforts at categorization the humans get up to. I thought it might help you to know that there’s been scientific study into your orientation.”

“Ah,” Crowley said, feeling the usual whacked-in-the-face feeling he got when Aziraphale lectured.

“You know, a good deal of the colloquial writing about asexuality _has_ focused on women, but asexual men are by no means unheard of, so you needn’t concern yourself there,” Aziraphale said, reaching across the table to pat Crowley’s hand.

“You’ve done your research,” Crowley said.

“Well, Doris at the library is ever so deft at navigating and parsing scientific journals. Truly a treasure.”

“I would have thought you had a gaggle of ambisexuals or what-have-you in your queer collective back in Soho to set you straight. So to speak.”

“Ha, ha,” Aziraphale said. “And no-one uses the term _ambisexual_ , not to my knowledge. Although I suppose if it’s your identity you may do as you please.” He blushed fetchingly. “And in fact I don’t know anyone who identifies as asexual nowadays. Not in as many words, at least.”

“Don’t you?”

Aziraphale’s blush deepened, but he hid it admirably by taking a great interest in swiping the rest of his plate clean with the last of his home-baked dinner roll and popping the lot in his mouth.

“I don’t know _every_ queer in Soho, Crowley,” he said as he took his plate to the sink.

“Just the gay men,” Crowley poked.

Aziraphale sighed and scooped his wine glass off the table, leaned against the cabinet as they continued their conversation. “Perhaps I know mostly gay men, yes. Am I to control which of the queer community gravitates towards me? I am a gay man. For all intents and purposes.” He took a sip of wine magnanimously. 

“Just don’t know if it’s a good look,” Crowley pointed out, taking his own things to the sink and starting the washing up. By rights he ought to either use a miracle or make Aziraphale do it, Crowley having cooked the dinner himself, but in his retirement he’d come to appreciate washing up as something of a ritual act. “You know, the angel of the queer community in Soho, but he really only _works_ with the ones like himself…”

Aziraphale bumped Crowley’s hip with his own. “You stop that. I _did_ Bless all of them, as much as I could, and helped whoever showed up. So I’m sure I have helped any number of asexuals, like I’ve helped the bisexuals, and the lesbians. And the ones that were finding their true gender, or genders, or no gender, and all. I Love all of them, of course I do! And it’s not my fault if only the gay men hung around after I’d done the helping. I always made sure everyone found safe little spaces where they could settle. And you make it sound like I had a gaggle of gay men hanging round at all hours, as if Iwasn’t a perfectly equal-opportunity runner-outer of _all_ customers when it came to that — ”

“All I’m saying,” Crowley interrupted, “Is it’s probably a _good_ thing your demon lover is asexual, then, isn’t it? You can get all the credit for being the queer angel, but I’ll be there to back you up with some insider knowledge of the obscure queer community.”

“I don’t know if the dears would appreciate being called _obscure_ , thank you,” Aziraphale sniffed, “But I suppose there’s nothing wrong with being a pair of specialists.”

“Mm-hmm,” Crowley said, grinning down at the sudsy water.

“And _anyway_ ,” Aziraphale continued. “It doesn’t _matter_ if I _know_ that the person was an asexual or not. I usually only see them in crisis and they’re not about to self-identify to the crotchety old queen running the bookstore they’ve shown up to in the midst of their trauma, are they?”

“Of course not, angel,” Crowley soothed. “Very right.”

“ _And_ ,” Aziraphale said, “I _have_ known plenty of asexuals. Just because it’s a relatively new term doesn’t mean it’s a relatively new orientation. You asked did I know any in Soho, and maybe I didn’t, but I have known plenty before the last generation or so.”

“Brother Simon,” Crowley said.

“Yes,” Aziraphale agreed. “And there was that one woman, in Louis XIV’s court? Well before it was his court, really, when he was still little. Weren’t you there?”

“No, I was in England for the interregnum,” Crowley said, scowling at the memory.

“Bad luck,” Aziraphale agreed. “Lady Marguerite de something or other. Rich as anything and couldn’t be bothered to marry.”

“Come to think of it,” Crowley said, “I got to know an artist on Crete back in the day — name of Rusa, I think? — he said he and his wife never had sex. Neither of them wanted to.”

Aziraphale snapped his fingers. “George Bernard Shaw!”

“The playwright?”  


“Yes, and his wife was too, that’s what made me think of it when you said that just now.”

“Gosh,” Crowley said. And then he said, without thinking at all, “That’s nice, isn’t it, to have a marriage where no one wants sex?”

He was busy with finishing the dishes and drying off his hands, so he didn’t immediately notice the awkward silence that fell over the kitchen. But when he looked up from the dishtowel, he saw Aziraphale’s stoic, pale face, and felt his heart drop violently through his stomach.

“Erghk,” Crowley said then, articulately.

Aziraphale flashed him a brave smile that looked more like a grimace. “Not to worry, my dear boy,” he said gamely. 

“I just meant it must be interesting,” Crowley tried.

“And so it must be!” Aziraphale agreed with gusto. 

“I love you,” Crowley tried again.

“I love you too!” Aziraphale cried. His voice had a booming, jaunty cadence that reminded Crowley of the English countryside in the first half of the twentieth century.

“We could probably have sex again,” Crowley offered, feeling awful and a little panicky. 

“But why would we?” Aziraphale asked. “No, no, my dear! All’s well! Not to worry, what!”

Crowley gaped at him. “Are you all right?”

Aziraphale seemed to give himself a little shake and come back to himself somewhat. 

“Top hole!” he said. The grin still felt a little forced, but less so.

“Top hole?” Crowley pressed, still little concerned.

“I’m perfectly fine, dearest,” Aziraphale said, finally sounding more like his usual self. “You’re right, of course, it must be very interesting. Do you know who else was asexual?”

Crowley decided he’d better let it drop.

“No, who?”

“Fréderic Chopin.”

“Is that so?”

“Yes, indeed. You know, he kept up a correspondence with George Sand…"

* * *

Awkward blips at dinner aside, a month into his newly-discovered sexuality (or lack thereof), Crowley was feeling really very cheerful on the whole.

His lack of any sort of sexual attraction hadn’t bothered him for six thousand years — why would it? Who would want to sleep with humans? (Well, Aziraphale, apparently.) It had seemed like a foregone conclusion. And it wasn’t like he hadn’t, ah. Lacked for self-care in that regard. Whenever his body got to feeling like it needed a good seeing to, his own hand had more than sufficed.

It was sort of funny, actually, because he _had_ had sexual fantasies about Aziraphale before they became intimate. At least he’d thought he had. Although upon closer reflection they had really been fantasies about cuddling. Maybe very intense cuddling on occasion. Sometimes even kissing! But on closer review any and all fantasies that he had supposed to be sexual were really in fact a desire for intimate, but non-sexual touch. Aziraphale had assured him that sexual desires and fantasies were rather a different thing than imagining a prolonged and perhaps focused cuddle.

Which was fine. They still had lots of cuddles, did Crowley and Aziraphale. It was — well, not exactly heavenly, but one could borrow a phrase, couldn’t one?

No, Crowley was a happily asexual-identifying demon. And if he sometimes felt a bit guilty, or like he was denying Aziraphale anything — well. He didn’t like to deny Aziraphale anything. But the truth of the matter was, Aziraphale was usually much better at concealing any discomfort he may have been feeling than he had done the night Crowley mentioned the convenience of a marriage in which both parties tended towards the abstinent. And, Crowley privately thought, he’d had enough sex he wasn’t particularly interested in over the last five years or so. Aziraphale could do without for a while.

Of course, there was a point of confusion, wasn’t there. He hadn’t not-wanted _all_ the sex he’d had with Aziraphale. He’d been pretty eager, actually, the first several months. And had enjoyed himself at least every now and again. Which was odd, maybe.

Still, it didn’t change the fact that he didn’t want sex _now_ , and _hadn’t_ wanted sex for nearly all the rest of his long and storied existence. 

So. There.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> CW -- Minimal discussing of boundaries; c. 1970s--1990s research and terminology regarding asexuality.
> 
> \---
> 
> Listen -- did I jump at the chance to use a Masters and Johnson study in this chapter? I did! Did it make me giggle knowing that Michael Sheen played Aziraphale and William Masters? It did!
> 
> I loved learning that early sex researchers lumped asexuals and bisexuals in the same category as having, roughly, an even amount of attraction to different genders. This basic idea that heterosexual = more attraction to different gender; less attraction to same gender; homosexual = less attraction to different gender; more attraction to same gender; bisexual = some attraction to different gender; some attraction to same gender; asexual = no attraction to different gender; no attraction to same gender. OBVIOUSLY there is a lot more nuance than that -- both in the research and in lived human experience! But as I've come to identify more and more strongly as ace, this early research has actually really resonated with me. I just think it's neat. And I thought the connection to bisexuality was especially cool. Solidarity forever!
> 
> I'm actually not sure what modern sex research on asexuality looks like. Seeing as this is book verse I stopped my search queries in the early/mid 90s. I think in the late 90s there's a really fascinating study that analyzed an earlier survey and identified the percentage of people in England who identified as ace, but I just can't recall now -- and anyway it was sadly too late for when this scene takes place.
> 
> The bulk of my research came from the following article in particular, although I spent a happy afternoon dipping my toes into other articles as well.  
> Theories of Sexual Attraction, Michael D. Storms, Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 1980, vol. 38, no.5, 783-792
> 
> The chapter dips into this a little bit but I think it's worth mentioning here as well -- lots of the modern conceptions and labels we have for sexuality are not the same as how people have historically thought about sexuality. So while the named people in this chapter could well have been ace, and people wrote about them/they wrote about themselves as lacking sexual desire/not participating in sexual activity, it's not as though Shaw or Chopin went around calling themselves asexual. (I mean, idk, maybe they did, I haven't read through their correspondence myself! But to the best of my knowledge, no, and it would have been a historical anomaly if they did so.) So like, asexuality isn't a newly made up thing, but it's not as simple as going "asexual!" and applying that to people posthumously. You know? 
> 
> Also -- I would have loved to have mentioned Tim Gunn and Edward Gorey in this chapter. They both are/were asexual men that I think Aziraphale and Crowley would at least know of and admire. But as far as I could tell, information relating to either of their identities wasn't made public until after the time this fic is set, so I'll just mention them here.
> 
> Thank you for reading! I'm at @missgiven on tumblr if you'd like to join me over there. See y'all next week!


	5. Chapter 5

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hello again! Hope you enjoy this chapter. It's a touch longer than the previous ones which I hope will be nice.
> 
> Specific (and slightly spoiler-y) content warnings in the end notes. Did update tags just a bit as well.

They’d been in a fully celibate relationship for over a month when Crowley suggested a day wandering around the grounds of a particularly well-kept estate. This estate was a special favorite of theirs, and they hadn’t been for some time. Crowley was happy and in love and carefree and wanted to look at some plants he wasn’t responsible for, and Aziraphale liked a good wander, so off they went.

It was a good day, as days went. Aziraphale admired the architecture of the estate and Crowley admired Aziraphale as the angel lectured on about the history of the estate’s previous owners. Later, Crowley admired the well-restrained gardens and Aziraphale admired Crowley as he did so.

There was a particular alcove along their usual walk that Crowley knew well. One of the walls, well away from the main house and the showiest parts of the garden, had a little rounded alcove cut into it. Ivy and wisteria covered some of the opening, obscuring it somewhat, and the angle of the wall it was nestled into made it even more secluded. An innocent wanderer might happily sit at the bench tucked deep into the alcove, well away from the eyes of other garden-goers, for a short and peaceful rest. A less innocent wanderer might well manage a tryst there.

Aziraphale, though an angel, was far from innocent, and had taken it upon himself to be less-than-innocent with Crowley within that very space as often as could be arranged.

As they wandered their usual path and came close to what Crowley privately thought of as _their_ alcove, Crowley noticed that he began to tense up, just slightly. 

So: they hadn’t had sex, or even kissed that thoroughly, in weeks. Aziraphale had suggested the boundary in the first place and Crowley had been pleased enough to go along with it. Had been thriving, really. And Aziraphale was lovely and doting and completely respectful. So there was no reason for Crowley to feel his shoulders creep up around his ears as they walked closer and closer to the particular alcove that had seen many an intimate _tête à tête._

He glanced over at Aziraphale as they walked. Did Aziraphale’s smile have a quality that seemed _just_ a touch artificial and stiff? Or was Crowley imagining things? He took Aziraphale’s arm as they walked, and found that Aziraphale was just as tense as he was.

“All right, angel?” he asked. His voice cracked in the middle of it.

“Never better,” Aziraphale answered quickly. He sounded almost entirely sincere, too. He smiled at Crowley, and a look of concern flashed across his face. “And you? You’re all right?”

“Just dandy, really,” Crowley told him, willing it to be true. He did not look up at Aziraphale to see if he’d believed him.

They passed the alcove. 

Aziraphale did not get that devious look in his eye. He did not loop a casual arm around Crowley’s shoulder, walk them over to alcove, tuck them inside away from peering eyes. He did not look at Crowley like he was starving for him, did not touch his face in rapture, did not grope at places that were traditionally inadvisable to grope at in semi-public until they were both gasping with it. 

They simply kept walking, arm in arm, and passed their alcove by.

A few yards past the alcove, the tension Crowley had been carrying all melted away, and he rather sagged into Aziraphale’s side. He felt a swooping rush of gratitude that shocked him in its intensity. 

Aziraphale stopped walking then, and he _did_ get a look in his eye, but it was desperate and searching, not the usual mischievous one he had often sported at this point of the walk. He pulled Crowley over to the side of the path, under the shade of a well-tended tree, and took Crowley’s hands in his.

“My dear boy,” he said, voice thick and strained with emotion in a way Crowley did not often hear. “My darling one. Beloved." 

“Aziraphale,” Crowley said, altogether overcome.

Aziraphale tore his eyes away from Crowley’s, glanced around the gardens quickly, looked back at Crowley. “May I?” he asked, touching the arm of Crowley’s sunglasses.

Crowley nodded, and Aziraphale gently pushed the sunglasses up onto the top of his head, pushing some of the hair away from his forehead.

Aziraphale stared at him again, his gaze intense and hyper-focused. Crowley felt something electric prickle at the base of his spine, energy zinging through him as he was fixed with the weight of Aziraphale’s attention.

“You mean the world to me,” Aziraphale said solemnly. “No matter what we do or don’t do together. It is a privilege to spend my days with you. Always.”

Crowley felt at a complete loss. He reached for the words to respond — tried several — and eventually settled on breathing out, entirely inadequately, “Wow.”

Fortunately for Crowley, Aziraphale seemed to find it adorable. He chuckled and let go of Crowley’s hands just to pull him into an embrace. He smudged one perfect kiss against Crowley’s temple and Crowley felt it down to his toes.

They began walking again. Miraculously, no one was around at all, so they were able to walk hand in hand, fingers interlaced. Aziraphale was grinning to himself. Crowley still felt dazed.

Eventually, he gathered his wits again. When he did, he stopped them and kissed Aziraphale soundly on the cheek.

“It’s a nice day,” he said, starting them off down the path again. “Glad we came to the gardens. D’you fancy a tea and cake at that little café before we go home?”

Aziraphale, of course, always fancied a spot of tea and cake. Both were rather perfect, as was the cozy evening they shared once they returned to the cottage — knees knocked together innocently under the café table, a broad chest was cuddled up to on the sofa, and two bodies fit together in a sweet embrace as they retired to bed. Crowley _basked_ in it.

* * *

It was several weeks later that Crowley began, little by little, to feel sort of. Peculiar.

It began as a strange kind of empty feeling around his torso. Right where the sex anxiety had used to be, in fact. It wasn’t intense, and it wasn’t even too distracting. Just every so often he’d be in the middle of something or other and would feel the briefest flash of this empty, aching sensation. But it was so vague, so soft, so brief, and happened so rarely, that he was able to ignore it most of the time.

He also started _noticing_ Aziraphale. There wasn’t exactly another way to describe it. He just kept looking at him, like Aziraphale had caught his eye out of the blue.

Crowley had looked at the angel for over six thousand years, but sometime in the last five or so he must have got used to him, and had stopped doing so quite so much. But now, again, he was starting to creep back up in the direction of their pre-relationship levels. In the evenings, he’d look up from his spot on the couch watching a nature documentary and feel momentarily arrested by the way the shadows the blue light cast over Aziraphale’s face. He’d even have to remind himself to look away.

Or he’d walk into the study to get Aziraphale’s opinion on their plans for the weekend and feel stunned by the sweet way his light hair curled around his ear. 

(“Crowley?” Aziraphale had asked, pulling Crowley out of his unexpected reverie, and Crowley had flinched badly in surprise. It had been embarrassing.)

So. That was a new-again thing that was happening to him.

One day, he came into the kitchen from doing some late summer weeding in the garden to find Aziraphale there as well, putting the kettle on. Crowley was warm and sweaty all over, but had managed to come inside right at the zenith of being warm and sweaty and putting in a good day’s work, before it tipped over into feeling soggy and disgusting and exhausted. He felt particularly _alive_ as he came in through the kitchen door and found himself nearly face-to-face with Aziraphale.

“Hi, angel,” he said.

“Hello,” Aziraphale said faintly. He stared at Crowley, looking gobsmacked. He visibly swallowed and his eyes dropped, _so_ briefly, to Crowley’s lips.

And wasn’t that an idea? They hadn’t done much serious kissing in months. Just sweet closed-mouth affairs that never lasted very long, and weren’t even always on the mouth. It had been refreshing. But, Crowley thought (as Aziraphale stared helplessly at his face), maybe he actually fancied a more thorough kiss after all. Just to mark the occasion. As a treat.

He reached his face up to Aziraphale’s and kissed him. Aziraphale inhaled sharply and kissed Crowley back, with the same closed-mouth technique he’d been respectfully using for the past few months. He kept one hand on the kettle and the other where it dangled by his side, neither coming up to hold Crowley.

Well. That wasn’t what he wanted at all. Crowley wound his arms around Aziraphale’s neck, pressed another kiss into his lips. Aziraphale kissed back but again kept his mouth chastely closed. He still didn’t move his hands onto Crowley.

Aziraphale had always been the person to dial up the intensity on their kisses. How did he do it? How to invite a response? Crowley awkwardly tried to press closer to Aziraphale’s body and dart out his tongue to sweep against Aziraphale’s lower lip. It felt _good_ , or compelling, or something, but it also felt unfinished and maddeningly frustrating, because Aziraphale just. Didn’t respond.

What Aziraphale _did_ do was make a noise like a cat that’s been stepped on. He finally brought his hands to make contact with Crowley, but only to grasp his shoulders as he stepped firmly away. 

He gave Crowley a kiss on the forehead and said, “Good day in the garden then?” in a pinched voice, before scarpering out of the kitchen like a bat out of — well.

Crowley frowned to himself. The mug with the tea bag in it was sitting right there, next to the kettle that had boiled just a moment ago, so he fixed the tea Aziraphale had abandoned.

That had been very funny. Crowley still rather fancied a kiss, which was unusual for him, and he felt very put-out about the whole thing. The sweat under his t-shirt, which had felt affirming and sort of virile a moment ago, was cooling unpleasantly and making his back itch.

He brought Aziraphale his tea on the way to the shower. 

“Tea, angel,” he said as he came through the living room.

Aziraphale looked like his sunny self as he sat there with a book, as if nothing had happened in the kitchen whatsoever.

“Thank you, dear,” he said, smiling up at Crowley as he sat the tea down.

“You’re welcome,” Crowley said. He frowned at Aziraphale after he said it, wanting some kind of explanation. But Aziraphale quickly preoccupied himself with the book he was reading, and did not seem to notice, so Crowley gave up waiting and went to shower.

* * *

A few days later, when Crowley had nearly forgotten the kissing weirdness, he decided to pass the time by doing a little home baking. A classic Battenberg, all from scratch, to show he could.

This was fairly usual practice for him, although it had been a while since he’d done any baking. It was also usual practice for Aziraphale to come and sit at the kitchen table while he worked, typically showing up miraculously just in time to taste the batter before it went into the tin, and then lick any spoons necessary as Crowley got on preparing the toppings.

“Baking, are you?” Aziraphale said, coming to have a seat at the kitchen table right on cue.

A hot mug of tea was waiting for him in his habitual seat. Crowley knew this game.

“You nearly missed me this time,” he teased. “Two more minutes and it would have gone in the oven.”

Working on some kind of instinct — this too was a usual part of the routine — Crowley dipped a finger into the bowl of batter and turned to offer it to Aziraphale for a taste.

Aziraphale stared momentarily at Crowley’s finger as if stunned. After an unexpected pause, he finally reached out with his _hand_ to take the batter off Crowley’s. 

That. Was not routine. 

Usually Aziraphale had a grand time sucking batter off Crowley’s finger. Usually he’d even complain he hadn’t quite got enough taste, and would Crowley mind offering him another, there’s a good fellow. Usually Crowley didn’t get his batter into the tin before Aziraphale had got at least two of Crowley’s fingers down his throat, and maybe even thoroughly rogered Crowley against the kitchen table. 

It had occasionally been a little overwhelming, and often annoying as he worried about his batter going off sitting there on the counter. 

But the fact of the matter was that batter wouldn’t dream of changing consistency before Crowley damn well wanted it to, and he found himself _missing_ Aziraphale’s usual kitchen-centered attentions.

Crowley turned back to his baking, feeling odd. Very odd.

* * *

He still felt odd that night when they went to bed. It was that achey, empty feeling he’d noticed a while ago, but louder and longer-lasting than usual. As if he knew there was an itch somewhere that could easily be dispatched with a small amount of scratching, but he wasn’t exactly sure where the itch was.

For once, he was the restless one and Aziraphale (who came to bed most nights, but only slept sparingly) drifted right off, curled close around Crowley’s back. Crowley stared at the wall and fretted.

As he was fretting, the uncomfortable achey feeling he had only grew. It felt like something was clawing around in his stomach.

Aziraphale shifted around in his sleep, tucking in tighter around Crowley. As he shifted, his arm moved and one of his fingers brushed minutely against one of Crowley’s nipples.

… _ah._

The ache Crowley had been feeling suddenly became a lot less nebulous and a lot more centralized right in between his legs.

That was disconcerting. Had he made up the whole thing about not wanting to have sex after all?

He wriggled uncomfortably, and in his wriggling, inadvertently pressed his bottom up against Aziraphale’s, well. Against Aziraphale.

Aziraphale wasn’t hard, although Crowley was in danger of becoming so. Drat. 

Maybe Aziraphale would wake up. Crowley wriggled a little more, this time with more intention behind it. Aziraphale waking up and seducing him with sleepy, comfortable sex actually sounded like just the thing, but — nothing.

Come to think of it, should Crowley even be wriggling around like he was? First the kissing, then the disappointment when Aziraphale didn’t fellate his fingers in the kitchen, now this? 

He was pretty sure he hadn’t been wrong about not wanting sex. But here he was.

Maybe this was a cure? Maybe he suddenly felt terribly attracted to Aziraphale and suddenly wanted to ravish him, finally pull his weight in things?

He forced his hips to be still, pushed himself up in bed and looked down at Aziraphale’s sleeping face.

This was it. He felt sexual attraction after all. He would look down at his angelic lover and feel consumed by passion to make enthusiastic love to him.

While he was waiting to be swept away by his own passion, he got distracted by the sweet curve of Aziraphale’s cheek. And his lips. His lips were so very beautiful — soft and pink and all sort of. Curvy. As lips do.

Ah! That had to be the sexual longing. Crowley wanted to kiss his lips.

Well. No, in fact. Just wanted to look at them, really. Kissing might be nice, a bit later, he’d have to consider a little more.

Crowley recalled that his penis had become hard some moments ago and had not yet gone down. Bit annoying, that. 

Oh, but Aziraphale was precious when he slept. 

Crowley folded back down to lie down again. Bottoms and penises and achey feelings in one’s physical forms or no — he’d had rather enough.

He drifted off to sleep still admiring Aziraphale’s face. He really was adorable.

* * *

So Crowley mostly didn’t want sex, and that was fine, he was asexual, great, cool, fine.

But sometimes he did, apparently. At least he did in vague urges that left as abruptly as they arrived. And anyway, you didn’t live six thousand years just to get hung up on a specific label humans made up thirty years ago to describe a phenomenon that had happened for ages in endless permutations, so. Onwards, etc.

Today he was feeling that vague feeling that made him feel as though he couldn’t be close enough to Aziraphale. 

This had led him to follow Aziraphale from room to room throughout the day. He trusted he was autonomous enough on other days to make this seem like a cute one-off, and not uncomfortably desperate. When Aziraphale eventually settled in for a good afternoon of bird watching in the armchair by the window that overlooked the garden, Crowley settled himself right on Aziraphale’s lap.

That led to Crowley’s latest suspicions.

Aziraphale, he supposed, was no longer wearing any genitals. Certainly not a penis. And it was unlike him to sport a vagina. Of course, wiping the slate clean (so to speak) was also unlike Aziraphale, so it was anyone’s guess, and Crowley felt that he couldn’t rightly ask, but Crowley was nearly positive that Aziraphale no longer had a penis.

When Crowley had got into his lap, Aziraphale had wrapped one arm around him and kissed his cheek and it had all been very lovely. Crowley had laid his head on Aziraphale’s shoulder and settled in for a cuddly nap.

Settling in for a nap required a good deal of shifting about, with Crowley’s bottom pressed firmly into Aziraphale’s lap.

Aziraphale was an angel who appreciated the pleasures in life, but he could control himself, and so it didn’t immediately faze Crowley when nothing poked at his bottom as he got comfortable on Aziraphale’s lap. 

But Crowley was a curious demon, wasn’t he? He liked to test a theory. And Aziraphale _had_ been known to get hard in his sleep, so it really had been sort of funny that Crowley hadn’t felt anything the other night when he’d done all that wriggling, and what was that about?

So after an hour or so of entirely uneventful lap-sitting, he sort of kissed at Aziraphale’s neck a little, keeping it mostly chaste — he really didn’t want to start anything. (Did he? He checked in. That achey feeling was hanging around, in fact, but he still didn’t want to act on it.) He adjusted his position in Aziraphale’s lap with a little more writhing than was strictly necessary. 

“Comfortable, dearest?” Aziraphale said, sounding entirely cool and collected.

“Fine, angel,” Crowley said, finally ceasing his movements. He’d learned enough.

The bastard had banished his cock off!

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Content warnings: general anxiety; mentions of genital switching (doesn't happen "on-screen," only briefly referenced); ace character working out what it means that they are more sex-favorable than previously understood; probably a second of internalized ace-phobia. 
> 
> \---
> 
> Fun fact that I didn't know until very recently! There's a name for a subset of asexuality where one is asexual and yet desires/is open to a sexual relationship. The term is cupiosexual. I don't know when it was coined, and the Crowley I'm writing here is down with identifying as asexual and doing what he likes, but I thought that was a neat little word, and apt for the direction this fic is heading in. The more you know!
> 
> I'm @missgiven on tumblr if you'd like to join me there. And as always: thank you very kindly for reading!


	6. Chapter 6

The empty, achey feeling in his stomach kept turning up again, no matter how many times Crowley placidly ignored it. 

He was pretty sure by now that it meant he wanted to have sex. He was waiting to feel overwhelmed by passion to just, er, grab Aziraphale by the sweater vest and, um, kiss him? 

Anyway, the passion wasn’t happening, which was actually fine by him, but he still felt…itchy. Like his skin was reaching for Aziraphale, which sounded terrible when you put it like that, but there it was.

No amount of cuddling and simple, sweet kisses seemed to assuage the achey feeling, not really. And he'd certainly tried. No, he was pretty sure he wanted to have sex. With Aziraphale, specifically. He was almost positive he was tired of _not_ having sex, at least.

Even the achey feeling didn’t feel very sharp, and he was easily distracted from it, which again: fine by him. But it did pop up often enough to be noticeable.

Worst of all, he was getting to be extremely self conscious that Aziraphale never looked at him... _lustfully_ anymore.

Aziraphale was a perfect gentleman, really. Terribly respectful. He’d offered no sex and he’d meant no sex. It had seemed to be a hardship for him maybe just a couple of times, but Crowley could tell he took pains to act completely unbothered at all times — and Aziraphale was rather a good actor, usually. He had also, apparently, done away with his penis to aid him in the effort.

In years past, Crowley had often felt overwhelmed and, he could admit it now, slightly uncomfortable with the amount of smoldering stares filled with barely concealed desire Aziraphale had directed his way. And the frequency with which Aziraphale would reach out to caress Crowley suggestively. And the _incessant_ kissing-with-tongues. 

But now, in a deeply unsettling turn of events, Aziraphale had ceased all such attentions and Crowley found himself _missing_ them.

It was even less sexual attention than Crowley had been used to pre-relationship. He hadn’t known that was possible. Even in the years before they became intimate, Aziraphale would often give Crowley some of those smoldering Looks, if none of the kisses or touches. It had quite given him butterflies in his tummy. And now — not even that!

It wasn’t that their relationship was completely platonic, not with the amount of cuddles and hand holding and face-kisses they managed to pack into your average day. But Aziraphale was clearly acting on principle, which he naturally excelled at, and had expunged completely any sexual component of their relationship.

It wouldn’t stand, really. Crowley didn’t know why or how he wanted sex again, and he didn’t feel very sexy about it, which was its own bit of confusing, but. He was very nearly certain that he wanted _something_ of-or-relating-to-sex, he was absolutely certain that Aziraphale really liked sex (and in particular sex with him), and that was that. 

He’d have to seduce Aziraphale. 

What was a seduction? A temptation.

Who conducted temptations? Demons.

What was Crowley? _A demon._

A very good one, in fact. This was practically a foregone conclusion. No sweat. He could handle the seduction of a sex-crazed angel.

* * *

The problem, Crowley reflected, was that he wasn’t a very sexy person, so none of his pajamas were very sexy.

Most of them were the same classic button-up shirt style that hadn’t changed since the 1930s or so. The top had a breast pocket, for someone’s sake. Hard to pull with a superfluous breast pocket over your chest. 

Actually, it might be harder to pull with a breast pocket that had something like a pocket protector and a bunch of pens in it. 

Regardless.

He also had a stack of lovely soft t-shirts that he wore with the pajama trousers — usually to layer under the pajama shirts when it got cold, but he occasionally wore one just because. They were all crew necks, though. It would have been nice to flash a little collarbone. Collarbones were definitely sexy.

Well, beggars and choosers and all that. Crowley set about finding the tightest shirt — a dark maroon number that Aziraphale had said brought out his eyes. He gave it a little demonic shake and it shrank even smaller.

His head nearly got stuck in the opening at that point, but he made it through. He appraised himself in the mirror. _Sexy._

The pajama trousers really were a bust though. Could anyone make a pajama trouser sexually stimulating? Or — were they meant to be exciting to begin with? Crowley supposed he wouldn’t know. 

Would it be too obvious to wear only underpants to bed? He looked at the stack of pajama trousers again. The drawstrings flopped unsexily up at him. No; go big or go home. 

He squeezed into a pair of black briefs and stared at himself in the mirror.

Oh, he looked like a trollop.

Between the tight red t-shirt and the black briefs that very solicitously and explicitly held his bits in place, it was _far_ too much. He _was_ going for a seduction, but Aziraphale did know him pretty well. That demon in the mirror was revealing just about everything in a way that should be sexy, but Crowley felt so uncomfortable that it was obvious in the awkward way he was standing and Crowley was fairly sure Aziraphale would just laugh at him.

No to the briefs, then.

He did have a nice pair of short little black boxers. Those would seem a little more natural. And there would probably be something alluring about the way the fabric would ride up over his bottom — Aziraphale should like that. Sensualist. 

Seduction costume in place, Crowley tucked himself into bed and waited for Aziraphale to come to the bedroom.

While he was waiting, it occurred to him that sitting there under the quilt wasn’t exactly beguiling. He jumped out of bed, shoved the quilt to the bottom, and sort of posed on top of the bottom sheet with his legs all splayed out in what he hoped was an inviting but casual manner.

He waited some more -- but still no Aziraphale. 

Well, maybe this could work in his favor.

He went searching, and found Aziraphale preoccupied with some reading in his study.

“Aziraphale,” he said, in what he hoped was a sultry voice, leaning casually against the door frame. 

It must have worked, because Aziraphale looked up and his jaw dropped.

He went to set down the book he was reading, but misjudged and knocked his cocoa over.

“Fuck!” said Aziraphale, fumbling to pick up the books off his desk.

“Sorry!” Crowley said, lunging forward to grab for the cocoa mug. Once it was in his hands, he remembered himself, and gave a quick snap — all the cocoa that had spilled over Aziraphale’s messy desk leapt back into the cup, leaving no trace on the desk at all.

“Ha ha!” Aziraphale said bravely, not looking up at Crowley. “Silly me. Bit jumpy. Thank you, dear.”

Crowley handed Aziraphale the salvaged cocoa. Aziraphale took it, carefully looking right in Crowley’s eyes and no lower.

“Come to bed?” Crowley asked. He was pretty sure the tone was nowhere near sultry this time, but Aziraphale’s cheeks went all pink, so that was all right anyway.

“Of course, dear, be along in a moment,” Aziraphale said, going back to fussing with the books on his desk.

Crowley felt a little dismissed then, but no matter. He would be ready when the time came.

A spark of demonic inspiration must have hit him as he came into the bedroom, because he grabbed a book from his bedside table and got on his stomach to read it (or pretend to read it), pulling one knee up to the side and letting the other leg splay out dramatically. He glanced over his shoulder and assured himself that his boxer-clad-bottom was displayed to best advantage for whatever being next walked into their bedroom door.

Position set, he got his head down and began to flip idly through his book. Cool. Casual. Sexy.

It was just another minute or two before Aziraphale came back to bed. Crowley knew the moment he arrived, because the door opened and Aziraphale immediately said, in a low voice, “oh good Lord.”

Crowley glanced over his shoulder again to give Aziraphale a toothy grin. “Hullo, angel.”

Aziraphale’s eyes were _fixed_ on Crowley’s bottom, as he had known they would be. Aziraphale could never resist. Crowley had this one in the bag.

He turned back to his book. Waggled his bum a little. The key part of temptation was all in the waiting. Bait the hook, let them bite.

The room certainly felt tense. Like there was some energy leading up to something. Crowley even felt a little tingly in between his legs. It would feel nice, to be wrapped up in Aziraphale in that way after being so purely cuddly and friendly for so long.

Then Aziraphale — cleared his throat? He walked over to the bed, and in one smooth movement pulled the quilt up from the bottom of the bed up to Crowley’s waist.

“Can’t have you catching a chill,” he said with a voice that sounded only slightly pinched, and went to fetch his own pajamas.

It hadn’t worked! 

Crowley couldn’t believe it. He’d never had to do anything with his bottom before, just had to put it in the same room as Aziraphale and off they went. It was unconscionable that Aziraphale could ignore Crowley when he displayed himself so invitingly.

Well, Crowley decided. He would just have to put in a little more effort.

* * *

For the next step in his attempt at seduction, Crowley needed some props.

Which had landed him here. In the produce section of Tesco’s.

He picked up a punnet of strawberries and scowled at it. Strawberries were a good choice — they really gave one something to wrap one's lips around — but it was very late for strawberries. These ones were still a bit green. He sighed and put them back in the case.

He felt the bananas staring at him from a display a few feet away. Nothing doing. He was planning an attempt at erotic eating, but a banana was a bridge too far. It would be the briefs all over again — too obvious, too desperate, too ridiculous.

His eyes lighted on another variety of fruit, not too far from the out-of-season strawberries. That would do. That would do perfectly.

He grabbed the punnet off the shelf and went on his way.

* * *

“Made up a cheeseboard for dinner, angel,” he said later that day, handing Aziraphale a glass of wine as he came into the dining room.

It was a beautiful cheeseboard. Crowley had done his very best. 

He tried to be a little suggestive as they ate, letting his fingers linger on his lips when he ate cheese and charcuterie. He wasn’t sure if he was doing it right, as it didn’t seem to be getting Aziraphale’s attention. So he tried flirtatiously brushing his hand against Aziraphale’s arm, which only got a pleasant smile in return.

They were having a perfectly acceptable dinner, talking and laughing and flirting and carrying on and there was _absolutely no_ sexual undercurrent to any of it! 

Well, Crowley had bought the figs for a reason.

At a lull in the conversation, a bottle of wine into their sumptuous cheese board, Crowley took action.

He made sure Aziraphale was looking at him and he picked up one of the figs he’d left whole carefully placed around the edges of the board. He dipped it in a bit of honey, then had to wait a shockingly long time before it stopped dripping. He checked to see if Aziraphale was still watching.

He was — his eyes were glued to the fig held elegantly in Crowley’s hand. Crowley had felt a little self-conscious about being sexy on purpose, but this was turning out to be a piece of cake — even easier than the attempt with the pajamas.

Satisfied he wouldn’t drip honey all over, he brought the fig up to his mouth.

He forced his hand to move slowly from its place above the dish up to his lips, happy to watch Aziraphale’s eyes track the movement with rapt attention. 

He wrapped his lips around the honey-dipped fig and slowly bit down, splitting open the red flesh with his sharp teeth. It really tasted very good, and by focusing so mindfully he really _experienced_ the fig. His eyes closed and he said, “Mmm,” tasting the floral notes of the local honey and the fig tangling together in his mouth. It was so diverting he almost forgot that his objective was seducing Aziraphale.

It finally seemed to be working, though, as when Crowley “mm’d” he heard Aziraphale let out a short little bitten-off moan of his own. When Crowley opened his eyes, he saw Aziraphale biting into his bottom lip so hard it looked like he’d break the skin, his eyes hungry and wanting. He seemed to be breathing quickly too. Thank goodness Crowley had finally got this seduction thing right. Aziraphale would be on him in 3…2…

“Thank you for _such_ a beautiful dinner, darling,” Aziraphale said in his plummy tone of voice, shooting up from his chair like he’d been bitten by something. He placed his hands on Crowley’s shoulders from behind and kissed the top of his head firmly. “I think I might help myself to a bath if you don’t mind. Bed soon?” And he darted out of the dining room as fast as his legs could carry him.

Crowley pouted and shoved the rest of the honey-covered fig into his mouth.

Honestly. He’d practically been fellating the fig in front of Aziraphale, and still off he ran as if he didn’t want anything to do with Crowley. The nerve!

He crossed his legs. The unspecific aching feeling wasn’t abating and he wanted to be _close_ to Aziraphale and really much more than that he wanted Aziraphale to look at him the way he’d used to. And to _acknowledge_ it, at the very least. Wasn’t Crowley doing a good job of being sexy? 

But Aziraphale just kept running off and being a principled stick in the mud.

He’d have to keep trying. Aziraphale had to break eventually.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Listen, they're gonna talk it out -- but not before being stupid for a while longer, bless their hearts.
> 
> Special thanks this chapter to Theo for suggesting the callback to Breaking Dawn: Part 2 which inspired the whole pajama bit.
> 
> Also I consulted [this article](https://www.cosmopolitan.com/style-beauty/fashion/a30326/90s-mens-underwear-ads-that-made-you-feel-things/) for some guidance on Crowley's underwear choices. I told you this was the 90s. (The text of this article is not remotely ace-friendly, being from Cosmopolitan, but is very educational regarding 90s mens underwear ads and how they were perceived by contemporary viewers.)
> 
> Thank you all very kindly for reading! I'm @missgiven on tumblr if you'd like to join me there. See y'all next weekend!


	7. Chapter 7

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Content warnings at end as usual!

Crowley had been wrong before. Aziraphale, it turned out, did _not_ have to break eventually.

There were plenty of days when Crowley forgot that he had a temptation he was working on, but the empty nagging feeling never went away for long. His skin felt increasingly itchy and he was becoming increasingly aware of his penis, which was _annoying_ , and it didn’t matter how long Aziraphale held him in the evenings, it never felt quite like enough. It felt like the times, in the six thousand years before he and Aziraphale had become lovers, when he would give in and see to himself. He still could, he supposed, but the crux of the matter was that he missed being with Aziraphale in that way. Somewhere along the line, “not wanting sex at all, thanks” had morphed into the mind-bending contradiction of “well, it’s not that I want to _do sex_ , but I would like to hang out with you in a specific physical way that may or may not end in orgasm, who knows really, and anyhow it would be great if you could do something about that, angel.”

The aching feeling, persistent though it may have been, was somehow still surpassed by the intensity with which Crowley missed Aziraphale’s more lascivious attentions. The loss had first felt like a relief, and then an annoyance, and by now Crowley just felt horribly sad and small when he thought about the way Aziraphale never seemed to enjoy him anymore.

Which wasn’t fair, of course, Aziraphale definitely enjoyed Crowley as a friend and as a non-sexual but very romantic life partner.

But it was fair, because the few times in the last several months Crowley had been able to wrangle a longing look out of Aziraphale, it had only been for a second or two at most before Aziraphale remembered his principles and ran off.

Well, that was why he was getting the big guns out. So to speak.

He finished fussing with the bath he had drawn for himself. The water was foamy with luxurious, bergamot-scented bubbles. (He’d found a bergamot-scented perfume in the late nineteenth century, after his nap, and Aziraphale had seemed especially captivated by it at the time. Sense memory could be a useful tool, after all.) A thick, white washcloth sat folded next to a bar of fine French-milled soap that smelled of roses. The little bathroom stool they kept was unfolded next to the bath, and on the counter Crowley had set two glasses and an opened bottle of a lovely red that promised a plummy taste with a full mouth-feel and well-balanced tannins.

He stared himself down in the mirror, and firmly retied the belt on his short, silky dressing gown. He usually preferred one of Aziraphale’s dressing gowns, but this was no time for playing around. This dove-grey number barely grazed his mid-thigh, and had about a 100% success rate of driving Aziraphale to distraction. Crowley had to get his point across somehow.

When he came out to the living room to get Aziraphale’s attention, however, all the meticulously crafted details he'd been working through fell out of his head at once.

The curtains had been drawn earlier when the sun went down, and the only light came from a single reading lamp by Aziraphale’s chair, leaving the rest of the room looking shadowy and soft. Aziraphale was frowning down at the crossword puzzle in his lap, those poncy reading glasses of his perched on his nose and casting little lines of shadow on his cheek. He was chewing his lip as he considered the paper in front of him, which was so adorable Crowley could hardly stand it. He looked so sturdy and sweet in his brown jumper. Crowley even found his eyes lingering on Aziraphale’s thighs, soft and full where they pressed against the chair. 

Any longing Crowley felt was a subdued thing, formless and vague. But no matter the quality of it, Crowley _longed_.

“Aziraphale,” he said. He’d meant to use the sultry voice again, but it just came out all shaky.

Aziraphale looked up at him and the expression on his face changed — went through quite a progression really — until Aziraphale fixed him with _that_ look, the one he’d kept seeing flashes of, shattered and desperate. 

“Was gonna take a bath,” Crowley managed, feeling as though he was in danger of choking on the words as he said them. “Thought you could. Read to me. Maybe you could — ” he had planned to say ‘lend a hand’ or ‘help me out’ or whatever struck him as Most Sexy in the moment, but it felt too cheap, he couldn’t do it, “Dunno. Just if you wanted to come with me.”

“Right,” said Aziraphale, and _yes!_ that look on his face stayed there, his voice sounded as shaky as Crowley’s, he was finally here with Crowley, finally. “How about you slip in the bath then, dearest, and I’ll just, er, be along in a moment.”

But Crowley, after months of intermittent work, was not ready to be dismissed again. He steeled his nerves. It felt terribly brave to insist to Aziraphale, “I can wait,” and remain where he was.

“Right,” Aziraphale said again. His eyes dropped down and snagged on the hemline of Crowley’s frankly obscenely short robe. When he lifted his eyes back up to Crowley’s, they looked a bit strained. Still, he smiled, and it was a normal, hesitant smile, not one of his falsely reassuring ones. “I’ll just — grab our book, then.”

When he did so, his movements were very slow and very careful. Crowley watched his hands as they rifled through the mess of the side table until they landed on the paperback they were working their way through together.

(That was probably the least sensual part of this whole plan. Aziraphale, not that he’d admit it, had a weakness for mass-market paperbacks, and Crowley had a weakness for a good romance, and they were taking it in turns to read aloud to one another a book about a time traveling army nurse called _Cross Stitch._ It was very undignified of both of them and Crowley just had to hope it didn’t negatively affect the mood. He just thought he couldn’t convince Aziraphale to come into the bathroom without such an innocent excuse, considering the Principles the angel was currently embodying.)

Crowley led the way to the bathroom, trying to let his hips sway a little, sensually, but ended up feeling sort of like a newborn calf. That was his mistake, of course: he could never do it on purpose. But he tried. And anyway, he heard Aziraphale make a little gasp behind him, so he couldn’t have been doing that poorly.

Aziraphale stopped at the door of the bathroom when they got there. “I can give you some privacy while you get in,” he offered. Crowley turned to face him and frowned a little.

“I don’t really feel like privacy,” Crowley said. He untied the slippery satin belt around his waist and dropped the dressing gown off his shoulders.

“Oh,” said Aziraphale, and it sounded almost like a moan. His eyes swept down over Crowley’s body, his hands clutching their book tightly against his chest. Crowley felt pleased and sort of proud as Aziraphale admired him unabashedly. It felt good to see Aziraphale captivated — to know he was the one captivating him. It had been a while.

Then Aziraphale’s eyes shot back up to Crowley’s face, looking guilty and worried, and then his gaze darted respectfully off to the side.

Crowley felt cold all of a sudden, cut off from Aziraphale’s regard as he was. He climbed into the bath awkwardly and tried to stop feeling stupid. This would work. Not only was he naked in front of Aziraphale, he had plenty of hot water and suds to apply judiciously to his naked form (in front of Aziraphale). This would _work._

“Er,” Aziraphale said. “Here you are.” He held out a glass of wine to Crowley. He must have noticed the glasses and poured as Crowley was getting in the tub and working on keeping it together. 

Crowley took it — Aziraphale was doing a bang-up job stopping their fingers from brushing romantically, unfortunately — and sipped at the wine, which was passable. Aziraphale seemed to be staring at his mouth while he did so, which was very good indeed.

“I’ll read, then?” and Aziraphale settled on the stool with his glass and found their place in the book.

Crowley tried to relax in preparation for Aziraphale’s voice, but Aziraphale startled him by letting out an undignified squawking sound. 

“All right, angel?” he asked.

“Perfectly,” Aziraphale assured him in an unnaturally high voice. He cleared his throat and began to read: “‘Chapter 15: The Revelations of the Bridal Chamber.’”

Despite the warm bath, Crowley felt any available blood drain down to his scaly feet.

“Is that so?” he asked. Nonchalant. Cool. Collected.

“I’m sure they’re non-conjugal,” Aziraphale said. "The revelations, I mean."

“It’s not exactly been that kind of book, has it?” Crowley agreed. This was frankly working out better than he’d hoped. He decided not to remind Aziraphale of the short but steamy bit between the time traveling nurse and her husband in the first few chapters.

Thus assuaged, Aziraphale began to read, and Crowley lounged in the bath. For several long minutes, Aziraphale was, unfortunately, correct — the two leads just had a nice conversation.

Crowley, who had been having lots of nice conversations, himself, felt he could sympathize.

He tried to make the most of it, lounging around in the bath as sumptuously as he could manage. It was all for naught — Aziraphale’s eyes remained glued to the book he was reading from.

Some lines seemed to flirt with the sensual — shoulders brushed, hands were held, thighs were mentioned — and when they did, Aziraphale’s voice became momentarily thick with emotion. But such sensual moments passed, Aziraphale did _not_ admire Crowley’s wet and soapy form, and Aziraphale’s voice went more or less back to normal.

There was a moment of danger when the young man had to remove the young woman's dress, and the tension in the bathroom (much like the scene in their novel) ratcheted up, but they were saved by the narrator’s quip about the difficulty of undoing hooks on one’s bodice in the eighteenth century, the improbability of which gave them both a good chuckle.

The reprieve didn’t last long, though, for not a moment later Aziraphale was stumbling over a line about springy chest hair and nipples. He stopped reading altogether, and his eyebrows shot up into his hairline as he quickly flipped through the next few pages.

He dropped the book unceremoniously as if it had burned him, and knocked back the rest of the wine in his glass in one go.

“Perhaps we can read that later, dearest,” Aziraphale said, voice very tight, and went to refill his wine glass.

Crowley may not have had a knack for sensuality, but he knew an opportunity when he saw one, and while Aziraphale’s back was turned he wetted the washcloth he’d set out and scrubbed some of the rose-scented soap onto it quick as a wink.

When Aziraphale turned back to face the bathtub, he nearly dropped the wine glass that had been resting elegantly in his hand.

“Crowley,” he breathed, now clutching at his glass desperately, his cheeks very pink. (Crowley felt like punching the air, but reminded himself that he was being sexy.)

He was washing his arms as slowly and smoothly as he could manage, and Aziraphale seemed completely struck by the vision Crowley must have made. Crowley looked away from Aziraphale, all coy, and set down the washcloth and used his hand to drip water over his soapy arms.

Aziraphale sat down hard on the stool, thighs spread, utterly transfixed.

Crowley moved on to clean his chest. He made a little more of a show of it than was really necessary, but still tried to keep his movements as simple and natural as possible lest he slip into ridiculousness.

It seemed to be working, because he noticed Aziraphale shifting around where he sat as if he couldn’t get comfortable. His half-full wine glass dangled by his knee, barely held by his fingertips, and his other hand scrubbed briefly at the top of his thigh, as if he wanted to touch and didn’t know what to do with the wanting.

Again he set down the washcloth and used his hands to gently splash water up onto his chest and shoulders. He sighed as he did so, eyes falling closed in delight at the dual sensations of warmth, from the water and from Aziraphale’s eyes locked on his form.

His front half all cleaned, it was time for his final move. He’d played it over in his mind for the past few weeks, as this plan came closer to fruition. He sat in the bath, aware of Aziraphale’s eyes on him, heart pounding, and struck.

“Will you do my back, angel?” he asked.

He darted his eyes over to Aziraphale as he asked. The flush left his cheeks and he went all pale in the face. The hand on his thigh spasmed. The hand holding the wine glass did too — Aziraphale finally succeeded in actually dropping the glass, and only a hasty miracle from Crowley stopped it shattering and completely ruining the mood. 

The smell of the red wine that spilled out from the glass tangled with the bergamot and rose from Crowley’s bath. Aziraphale’s chest was rising and falling rapidly and he was looking at Crowley helplessly. Crowley tried to look inviting and encouraging, but his heart was still pounding uselessly in his chest and there may have been some apprehension in his look as well. Strangely, it wasn’t a _bad_ thing, the apprehension. Not yet at least. He had a good thirty seconds before the apprehension shifted from delicious to agonizing. He hoped Aziraphale could tell it was good right now.

Aziraphale cleared his throat. “Certainly, Crowley,” he said, getting up from his stool.

Crowley turned in the bath, presenting his back to Aziraphale, and scowled a little to himself. Aziraphale’s voice sounded suspiciously measured and calm. Crowley did not _want_ measured and calm.

Moving very slowly, Aziraphale came to kneel beside the bathtub and picked up the well-soaped washcloth. Before he began washing Crowley, he set one broad palm on Crowley’s naked shoulder (Crowley gasped; couldn’t help himself) and sweetly kissed the back of his head.

Aziraphale brought the washcloth up to the back of Crowley’s neck and began to wash him with the most respectful and perfunctory of movements. 

So he needed a little encouragement. That was fine.

It didn’t even take much active work on Crowley’s part, either. Even with all the cuddling, there had been a distinct lack of stroking in the past several months. Aziraphale hadn’t touched him _this_ much, with this level of intentionality, in ages. Crowley “mmm’d” and “aaaah’d” as Aziraphale rubbed the soft cloth over his skin, and didn’t even need to play it up. He could hear Aziraphale’s deliberately measured breathing close behind him, and his movements with the washcloth slowed down just a little, became just that little bit less professional.

When Aziraphale dipped the washcloth below the waterline to wash his lower back, it slipped out of his hand and floated down to the bottom of the tub. This left Aziraphale’s bare hand scant millimeters away from Crowley’s bare skin.

They both froze. Aziraphale’s other hand was still on Crowley’s shoulder, and he squeezed and released his grip there, almost unconsciously.

So, so softly, Aziraphale touched his fingers below the water to Crowley’s waist, pressed in close.

They moaned with it, both of them, twin sounds simultaneously wrenched out of them by the contact. Aziraphale was with him, Aziraphale would show Crowley how he wanted him, he was about to have, for the first time in far too long, all of his angel — he pressed back into Aziraphale’s hands, seeking the warmth of Aziraphale’s chest —

But as he pressed back, so did Aziraphale, jerking up and away from Crowley and the tub and everything. 

“Do forgive me,” he gasped. “Shouldn’t — that is, I forgot myself, my — my dear, dear boy…”

Crowley turned around just in time to see Aziraphale looking a complete fright, one hand fisted in his hair, the other pulling at the collar of his jumper as if it was choking him. His eyes were wild and he was looking anywhere but at Crowley.

“Angel, I — ”

But before Crowley could string together words to reassure him, to bring him back, anything, Aziraphale choked out, “I’m sorry!” and darted from the bathroom, leaving Crowley alone again. His concentration altogether lost, the bathwater suddenly started to cool.

It wasn’t very becoming of him, but if Crowley acted out his disappointment with bitter tears and cleaning up the bathroom rather more aggressively than was necessary, well. Such things often happen, becoming or not.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Content warnings -- Another misguided attempt at seduction without any Reasonable Discussion of Boundaries, Etc. 
> 
> \---
> 
> If you're wondering if you know that book they read in the bath, you probably do. "Outlander" was published in the UK in the early 90s under the name "Cross Stitch." I just. Couldn't pass it up, I'm afraid.
> 
> I will also say that this is the last chapter that the lack of communication remains unaddressed. I wanted shenanigans first, but there will be payoff.
> 
> As ever, thank you all kindly for reading! I'm missgiven on tumblr if you want to hang out with me over there. See y'all next weekend. :)


	8. Chapter 8

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Warnings at the end as usual! <3

Following the Embarrassment of the Bathtub, things between them became increasingly strange.

Crowley tried to bring it up once or twice in the days following, but Aziraphale brushed the topic aside easily and they said no more. For his part, Aziraphale seemed to feel he’d transgressed in some significant way, and pampered Crowley accordingly, when he wasn’t avoiding him.

Crowley still ached and wanted in ways that were very confusing to him, because Sweeping Sexual Passion Or Interest still evaded him, but he still wanted the part of their relationship back where they were intimate in _all_ the ways he knew how. 

In some ways, he felt himself wanting Aziraphale more than he ever had, even more than in the fraught months before they had become lovers in the first place. Acknowledging that the kind of sexual excitement that Aziraphale shared with so many humans was not for him had, ironically, allowed him to want to share himself with Aziraphale in a different way. He supposed others might find this new sort of desire (ish) that he was feeling boring and plain, but it suited him exactly. He didn’t need to lament all the ways he was failing to want Aziraphale — he could feel perfectly ambivalent to sex itself but still wish, in a benign way, to join Aziraphale in the angel’s more physical interests. Firstly, it was a treat to experience Aziraphale’s enjoyment of the world up close and personal. Secondly, even though the process could be a hassle, orgasms were a bit of all right.

He suspected by now that he should have talked to Aziraphale about the whole thing, but he just couldn’t force himself to bring it up. Aziraphale had been so awkward and avoidant following the episode in the bath, and no matter how much Crowley thought an awkward conversation might do the trick, it wasn’t enough to override their adopted Englishness and subsequent commitment to just muddling through and figuring things out.

* * *

They’d been celibate and suffering for going on six months now, and Crowley was trying a new phase of his plan wherein he figured that a sensualist like Aziraphale, no matter how principled, could only last so long before succumbing to Crowley’s charms.

(The key feature of this plan was willfully forgetting the preceding six thousand years or so in which Aziraphale manfully avoided that very fate.)

Anyhow, since it was bound to happen anyway, Crowley carried on as usual, feeling sorry for himself when he remembered to, and for quite some time made no more attempts to seduce Aziraphale.

This phase of the plan did not seem to be working terribly well, as Aziraphale merely kept up the romantic but not-at-all sexual kisses and cuddles and never himself pushed Crowley in the slightest. Although Crowley _did_ catch him staring at his bottom at least twice in two months (and Crowley was counting).

They were off today for a Christmassy ramble through the grounds of the estate they’d been to all those months ago. The house and grounds were to be decorated for the season, and outside there were meant to be carol singers and hot cocoa stands and a winter market with handmade gifts. It was all very twee, but both of them had developed something of a soft spot for Christmas festivities in their retirement.

(Christmas had been an especially busy season for both of them since the late 1800s, both rushing around like mad to set up blessings and allow for temptations. This excess of work led to an excess of cozy nights in Aziraphale’s backroom, too tired to talk much at all. Rather than talking, they’d clutch at glasses of scotch, or wine, or seasonally appropriate eggnog, and sometimes their shoulders or their knees would brush, and they’d be quiet together. In any case, once there was no need for rushing about all December anymore, they’d both gotten a little romantic about indulging in the season themselves.)

All the holly and mistletoe in the house made Crowley feel a little itchy, so he popped outside and got a cocoa for Aziraphale and a coffee for himself while Aziraphale finished up inside.

After hot drinks and a good wander of the winter market (Crowley purchased a couple pot holders from a stand run by particularly enterprising schoolchildren; Aziraphale a knobbly yellow tea cozy from someone’s nan), they decided a wander through the grounds was in order. Most of the guests were crowded up around the large house, and only a few wandered further afield.

It was quite a chilly night, so Crowley took the excuse to wind his arm tightly through Aziraphale’s and walk as close to him as possible.

It was a nice night, too. The air was crisp and the stars were bright. Aziraphale’s arm was soft and warm against his. The carol singers could be heard, very faintly, starting up a spirited “Patapan,” Crowley’s favorite. The garden they were walking through had that lovely quiet feeling unique to gardens in the early part of winter, like they were taking a well-deserved rest after all that difficult growing.

So when the path wound around and Crowley saw _their alcove_ , several yards away, he was struck by something. It was potentially the spirit of Christmas, or it was potentially the experience of years spent in a sexual relationship he didn’t understand with the love of his life, followed by six months of forced introspection, all coming to a head. In any case, it took the form of an Idea, which then became a Conviction, which shortly thereafter became a Disaster.

As they passed by their alcove, Aziraphale made to keep walking the path, but Crowley disengaged his arm from Aziraphale’s. He glanced around to be sure they weren’t watched, grabbed Aziraphale’s hand, and started walking resolutely towards the sheltered cut-out nook in the wall.

“What in the world are you doing?” Aziraphale blustered at him, dragged behind Crowley.

Crowley didn’t answer, just pulled Aziraphale into the little alcove they had so often shared. Inside far enough to be entirely out of sight, he crowded Aziraphale up against the wall, pressed his body up against Aziraphale’s, and kissed him.

He was worried, for an instant, that it would be like his first disastrous attempts in the kitchen all those months ago, that Aziraphale would stand there woodenly, rejecting him.

It was only an instant of worry, though, because finally, _finally_ , it _worked._

Aziraphale’s arms came up and wrapped around Crowley’s back, enfolding him in warmth and security and rightness. He kissed Crowley like he hadn’t in months and Crowley moaned into it, pressing up into Aziraphale in relief. 

He reached his arms up to twine around Aziraphale’s neck and Aziraphale made a devastated sound into Crowley’s mouth, then before Crowley could really process what happened, he found _himself_ with his back to the wall, one of Aziraphale’s arms strong around his lower back, the other framing him in, hand braced against the rough stone wall. Aziraphale’s tongue swept across Crowley’s bottom lip, unrestrained and hungry like he was going to devour him, and Crowley let his mouth fall open to it, let himself be kissed and kissed against the wall in their little alcove. 

Scant seconds later, as if he was working on instinct (Crowley rejoiced), Aziraphale reached forward with one leg, knocked Crowley’s feet apart, bore into him, slotting a thigh in between his legs. 

He must have felt Crowley hard against his thigh. Perhaps that was what drew him out of the moment. 

In any case, one minute Crowley was basking in Aziraphale’s desire, and the next, Aziraphale was pulling away from him _again_ and backing up as far as he could in the narrow space of the little nook.

“What are you _playing at?”_ Crowley demanded, before he could think better of it. His penis was hard and he’d been enjoying having Aziraphale’s thigh up against it and he’d _really_ enjoyed Aziraphale taking pleasure in Crowley, like Crowley knew he liked to, like Crowley quite liked as well, come to think of it, and Crowley was _done_.

Aziraphale, it seemed, was done as well, because he said, between great gasping breaths as he obviously tried to calm himself down, “What am I playing at? What are _you_ playing at?”

“I was trying to have a nice time with my lover,” Crowley shot over at Aziraphale, who gave a short, bitter laugh and put his face in his hands, “Just like we always do when we pass this alcove.”

“We don’t _do_ that anymore,” Aziraphale said miserably, voice muffled against his palms.

“Well, it’s not for lack of trying on my part, let me tell you,” Crowley huffed.

Aziraphale dropped his hands from his face and stared over at Crowley. The expression of hurt on his face was dreadful. “Yes, I could see that. Why are you testing me? You’ve been testing me this whole time! I don’t understand why.”

Crowley’s jaw dropped. “You have got to be kidding.”

Aziraphale's expression changed in an instant, and he glared at Crowley. “I’m bloody well not kidding, and you should know it, you — you _tempter!”_

He swept out of the alcove, a great ball of hurt and rage shoving past Crowley at great speed.

Crowley blinked for a minute, then followed. “Hey!”

He had to jog to catch up with Aziraphale, who was halfway to the turning. “You haven’t wanted anything to do with me…er, _like_ _that_ , for the last six months!” he reminded Aziraphale, whose lips were pressed together so firmly as to have nearly disappeared altogether.

Aziraphale scoffed at that, and kept moving. “Of course I haven’t,” he said dismissively, sarcastically.

“Well you’re the one who _banished your penis off_ ,” Crowley reminded him.

Aziraphale stopped as suddenly as if he’d run into a wall. The young couple who had been kissing under a nearby tree visibly stopped canoodling and started gawping at the lovers’ spat taking place ten feet from them.

Aziraphale rounded on the set of lovers. “Do you _mind_ ,” he said acidly. 

They were all, of course, in a place that was quite open to the public, but Aziraphale had a great deal of practice at shooing with conviction. The couple scurried away with no protest at all. The young man even tossed a “sorry, gents!” over his shoulder.

Aziraphale rounded back to Crowley. “I don’t know how you know about that,” he said, “But since you do, surely _that_ should be enough to illustrate to you of the seriousness of my intentions?”

Crowley chuckled darkly. “Your intentions to what? Ignore me? Keep yourself separate from me?”

Distantly, he supposed that perhaps he wasn’t being fair. He ignored that sensible voice for the time being.

“Keep myself — ? How on earth could you think such a thing? Crowley, of course my intentions have _only_ been to respect your desires.” Aziraphale looked confused now, and even took a cautious step towards Crowley, but Crowley was too far gone.

“I mean, I think I’ve made my desires fairly clear, actually,” he bit out. “Doesn’t stop you from running out the room every time though, does it.”

Aziraphale peered at Crowley gravely. “I thought we had discussed your aversion to sexual activity.”

Crowley turned on his heel and started walking. “Yeah.”

Aziraphale had to jog a bit to catch up this time, which felt satisfying to Crowley, in a mean way. “You didn’t even want me to kiss you on the _mouth._ ”

“Well not all the time I don’t,” Crowley said. His face felt very hot and he thought maybe he’d got some dust in his eye or something because it was stinging awfully.

“You…want me some of the time?” Aziraphale asked, trying to juggle keeping an eye on the path and an eye on Crowley’s face simultaneously.

“Well,” Crowley said, his voice too loud and startling a small group that they passed (Aziraphale glared at them, he could tell), “I mean, I guess I’m the only one, it hasn’t seemed to bother you, going celibate for six months.”

“Of course it’s bothered me!” Aziraphale said, trying to reach out to touch Crowley’s arm, but Crowley tugged it out of his reach. 

“Well I’m sorry to be such a bloody bother,” he said, well aware he was just plain being irrational now. They were passing the manor house and coming up to the car park just beyond. Part of Crowley wondered what the trip home would be like. Not good, he could imagine.

“I’m afraid I really don’t understand anything that’s going on,” Aziraphale said helplessly.

Good, Crowley thought savagely. That makes two of us.

They reached the car. Crowley threw open the driver’s side door with great energy, but stopped before he could throw himself onto the seat.

Instead of going around to the passenger’s side door, Aziraphale came to stand by Crowley on the driver’s side.

I’d like to know what’s going on,” he said hesitantly. "I'm feeling all out of sorts."

The softness of Aziraphale’s voice must have got to Crowley, because tears that he had been keeping at bay for some minutes now welled up inexorably in the corners of his eyes. He turned away from Aziraphale slightly as he dashed them away.

“Well,” he said. “Maybe we could. Talk at home.” His voice still sounded petulant but he supposed it was maybe an improvement anyhow.

“That would be nice, my dear,” Aziraphale said, although his tone sounded more like he was agreeing to an execution than a conversation. “And in fact, I had just been thinking that a flight might be just the thing for the old wings. If you’d be a lamb and drive the Bentley home by yourself, that is.”

It was like him, the bastard, to turn around and be lovely and understanding and giving right when Crowley was expecting the fight to carry on another several hours. It didn’t feel fair, that Aziraphale was being so wonderful when Crowley had acted remarkably like a tit. But as he had long since learned that on occasion, one had to accept things that didn’t feel fair, even if they shook out in one’s favor.

“I can do that, angel,” he told the interior of the Bentley, avoiding looking at Aziraphale and pretending he wasn't actively crying.

“Wonderful.” Aziraphale was smiling at him — he could tell by his voice. “Would you allow me to kiss your cheek in farewell?”

Crowley laughed at the return of the plummy voice Aziraphale had put on, but presented his cheek to be kissed, which had likely been Aziraphale’s aim after all. Aziraphale’s lips were soft and warm against his cheekbone. Crowley quickly returned the kiss, too, breathing in Aziraphale’s particular smell and willing himself to calm down. He ended up resting his forehead against Aziraphale’s cheek and _sobbing_ a little, can you believe it, but Aziraphale just gathered him against his chest and held him ’til it passed and made comforting noises at him. When Crowley _did_ collect himself, Aziraphale kissed him on the top of the head and told him he loved him and he’d see him at home.

After Aziraphale had gone off to find a suitably discreet place from which to take flight, Crowley took several long minutes alone in the Bentley before driving off home to meet him.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> CW: One more attempt at seduction that is initially much more successful, then is interrupted by a fight. The fight turns the corner and begins to resolve by the end of the chapter.
> 
> \---
> 
> What a week, right? Woof. I hope everyone is breathing a little easier now. 
> 
> Anyway! I'm sorry if the note last week was too much of a tease for what little resolution there actually is in this chapter. Big Conversations are coming still but they have finally begun to resolve everything.
> 
> I'm at @missgiven on tumblr if you like.
> 
> Thank you as ever for reading!!!


	9. Chapter 9

Crowley pulled up to the cottage some short time later with his heart hammering away like mad in his throat and feeling like his stomach had absolutely vacated the premises. Seeing the glow of the porch light Aziraphale had left on for him eased his nerves somewhat, but not, unfortunately, very much.

“Angel?” he called as he let himself in. There was no response.

His nerves, mildly assuaged as they had been by the gesture of the porch light, strung themselves back up more tightly than before.

“Aziraphale?” he said again, hanging up jacket and scarf and the lot in the coat closet.

No answer, except for — 

“Bugger,” Aziraphale muttered under his breath, further into the house.

Crowley wound his way through the darkened house until he got to the cozy warmth of their living room. He stopped short when he got to the doorway and saw Aziraphale bent over the coffee table, tutting aggressively. 

Aziraphale must not have heard Crowley at all, which gave him a minute to appreciate Aziraphale’s bottom in his corduroy trousers. It had been quite a long time since he’d been able to admire, or touch, or anything. He still didn’t exactly want to touch that bottom, not in the extensive way Aziraphale had used to want to touch Crowley’s. _But_ , Crowley could happily admit, it was really a very nice bottom. Maybe later he could pat it. Aziraphale would probably like that a good deal, and it would feel nice under Crowley’s hand, too.

“Hello there,” he said, and Aziraphale jumped and upset the plate of biscuits he’d been holding.

“Drat!” Aziraphale cried, eyes jerking over to Crowley and back to the upturned plate of biscuits. “I mean, hello, love! Oh, dear.”

“Let me help,” Crowley said, but as he walked forward and Aziraphale stepped back, he saw the array of goodies Aziraphale had spread out on their coffee table.

He could see a Wagon Wheel squashed under the upside-down biscuit plate, presumably with more underneath. That was kind, because Aziraphale said the marshmallow made his teeth ache and so they only really kept them in the house when Crowley got a craving, which happened once every two months or so. 

Next to the disheveled Wagon Wheels were a dish of allsorts and a packet of Fry’s Turkish Delight, both in which Crowley had been known to indulge on occasion.

There was a generous wedge of banofee pie — clearly Crowley's favorite from their local bakery, which was surprising, because Carol always closed early on Fridays and it wasn’t like Aziraphale would have had time to pop in. And next to that, inexplicably, was a dish of sticky gulab jamun from Joshi’s. 

It was all of Crowley’s favorite things.

All of _Crowley’s_ favorite things, that Aziraphale himself didn’t care for at all.

He sat down and snatched the lid off the tea pot to get a better smell. Sure enough — Russian Caravan tea, one of Crowley’s private indulgences, when Aziraphale himself could hardly be coaxed away from PG Tips (the tea bag being one of the few inventions he’d immediately accepted and folded into his daily practice).He scowled at the wine bottle Aziraphale had set out.

There, too. He and Aziraphale rarely disagreed on wine, but considering the rest of the array, the vintage he’d chosen (that Crowley had praised highly but Aziraphale had remained on the fence about) was telling.

Crowley looked up from the display to frown at Aziraphale, who was wringing his hands. 

“Just thought I’d set out a little treat for us,” Aziraphale said, and set himself down in his habitual armchair.

Crowley felt the tears that had plagued him at the estate threaten to make a reappearance, and he pinched at the bridge of his nose, squeezing his eyes shut.

“But,” he managed eventually. “It’s not exactly for _us_ , now, is it.”

Aziraphale dropped the anxiety he’d been broadcasting loudly and gave one of his signature dismissive scoffs. 

“Do _forgive_ me,” he said, “For procuring your favorites after you’ve been in distress.”

Crowley sprawled back over the couch, eyes still tightly closed, and said something like, “Aaaaaeruugggghhhhhhhhhhhh.”

When he’d finished, he said (marginally more coherently), “I mean that’s just it, isn’t it.”

“I’m sure I don’t understand a bit what you’re talking about,” Aziraphale said.

“I mean I guess what I’m saying is, why not have some -- some chocolate digestives out? Dish of olives?  Maybe pick up one of those cheese scones you like from the bakery if you’re already miracling things away after hours?” Crowley asked the ceiling. “Or if you’ve got all these sweets laid out for me, why not do the tea or the wine _you_ like?”

“So now you’re upset with me for doing something nice for you,” Aziraphale blustered.

Fortunately for Aziraphale, Crowley was well versed in Aziraphale’s blusters, and he could suss out genuine hurt when he heard it. The space they’d taken in coming home separately also helped with the clarity.

Crowley threw an arm over his face and sighed. He was fairly certain it was him in the right and not Aziraphale, this time at least, but he was acting like a tit about it again.

“You have done something nice for me,” he agreed, his voice remarkably level.

“So why are you so upset?” Aziraphale demanded.

“Because,” Crowley said, and stopped. He thought maybe he should be looking in Aziraphale’s face for this, but couldn’t bear the vulnerability. “I just don’t know why you won’t enjoy yourself _with me_ anymore.”

Aziraphale took a great breath in, like he was gearing up for another tirade, but then let it all out on a sigh, as if he’d thought better of it. The next thing Crowley knew, Aziraphale had got up and come to kneel on the side of the couch. He pet at Crowley’s hair with one hand, the other nudged up against Crowley’s side.

“Darling,” Aziraphale said, finally. “Of course I enjoy myself with you.”

Crowley had really had _enough_ crying for the evening, but he still felt tender all over and a sob threatened to break out at the feeling of Aziraphale’s fingers in his hair. He breathed through the moment.

“You don’t, though,” he said, and his voice was all thick and stupid sounding.

“Of _course_ I — ”

“Then why won’t you kiss me?” Crowley asked, jerking up to sit upright, pulling himself away from Aziraphale’s soft hands and his soft face.

Aziraphale blinked at him. “Well. Because I thought we’d come to an agreement regarding physical contact?”

“When did we do that, Aziraphale?” Crowley demanded. “Was it the night we had a particularly horrible fight and I was overwhelmed and confused and you offered a break from sex? Was it the day when I said sometimes — _sometimes_ — I might not want to be kissed on the mouth? It certainly wasn’t the day I kissed you after I came in from the garden. Or when you wouldn’t even look at me after you read to me in the bath. It certainly wasn’t in our little alcove earlier today, when I all but threw myself at you and you didn’t want anything to do with me _at all._ ” He stopped, breathing heavily. That had been rather more than he’d been expecting to say.

“I — ” Aziraphale began, and stopped himself. “I don’t — ” He stopped again, shook his head, gave a little frown that would be adorable if Crowley wasn’t so distraught. “Are you telling me that you _want_ to engage in sexual relations with me? Were you mistaken, earlier this year?”

“No!” Crowley told him. “I’m still — ambisexual. Asexual. Whatever.”

Aziraphale leveraged himself up off the ground to join Crowley on the sofa.

“I don’t understand,” he said plaintively.

“I just,” Crowley tried. He picked at a thumbnail, eyes fixed firmly on his hands and away from Aziraphale’s gaze. “You don’t even really look at me anymore. Or grab my bottom, or anything.”

“Well, considering your newly discovered orientation, I simply presumed those things were no longer amenable to you. You didn’t _like_ it when I grabbed your arse, did you?”

“Well I thought _you_ did!” Crowley burst out. He busied himself with grabbing for the teapot and pouring himself a cup of smokey tea. 

Aziraphale didn’t say anything until Crowley had curled back up again, now with a teacup clenched in his hands.

“Why on earth would I do something you don’t like?” Aziraphale asked softly.

“I just thought you liked it, is all,” Crowley said, wishing bitterly he hadn’t said anything. “Thought you thought I was — attractive.”

Aziraphale laughed, but it sounded far more incredulous than cruel. “My dear Crowley, you’re the most sinfully attractive young man I’ve ever laid eyes on. If you’ll excuse the expression.”

Crowley darted a glance away from his teacup over at Aziraphale. He looked very sincere.

“Don’t know why it’s been so easy for you then,” he said, darting his eyes away again. “The whole celibacy thing has barely seemed to trouble you at all.”

Aziraphale laughed again, sounding like he was edging towards the hysterical. Crowley distantly hoped Aziraphale would keep it together, because Crowley certainly couldn’t do it on his own.

“Darling,” Aziraphale said, sounding vaguely admonishing, “I banished my cock off.”

Oh no, Crowley certainly couldn’t navigate this on his own. “I’m only saying, I don’t know why you would, because I thought you _liked_ having a penis, actually!”

“Of _course_ I like having a cock!” Aziraphale said.

“Then I don’t understand why you would banish it off!”

“To make it easier, of course,” Aziraphale said, as if it was as clear as day. “To tolerate wanting you so desperately when I couldn’t have you.”

In the face of such honesty, Crowley couldn’t help but turn back to Aziraphale. “I’ve been throwing myself at you for the last three months,” he said. “What do you mean you couldn’t have me?”

Aziraphale’s cheeks colored. It was unfairly adorable.

“If you must know, I thought you were testing me,” he said carefully. Then the careful facade dropped. “Weren’t you?”

Crowley set his teacup back on the coffee table and shoved himself at Aziraphale, curling up against his chest and making complaining noises until Aziraphale wrapped his arms around him.

“I was trying to get you to kiss me,” Crowley said into the softness around Aziraphale’s left pectoral. “Or maybe fuck me. Wasn’t testing you. Idiot.”

Aziraphale kissed the top of his head, and thwapped his bottom with one careful hand. Crowley squirmed happily, pleased to find his bottom the recipient of some of Aziraphale’s attention once again, even if just for a thwap.

“So I am to understand,” Aziraphale said slowly. “That you _are_ asexual. And were not mistaken when you said you wished not to have sex with me. And yet you have spent the last three months trying to seduce me.”

Crowley tucked his face firmly into Aziraphale’s neck and grimaced. It did sound a bit odd when you put it like that. “Rather,” he confirmed.

Aziraphale was blessedly rather intelligent when he wanted to be. “And you were unhappy when I set out all of your favorite things and none of mine,” he continued. “And you’ve been unhappy that I have been committed to celibacy entirely for your sake.”

“True enough,” Crowley admitted in a squashed voice, face still shoved into Aziraphale’s neck.

“My dear, you contain multitudes,” Aziraphale said, chuckling softly, his voice rumbling in Crowley’s ear.

Crowley pulled his face away from Aziraphale’s neck just enough to be heard clearly when he said, “Maybe don’t quote past conquests at me when we’re having a very delicate conversation, angel?”

“Oh, but Walt was a dear,” Aziraphale said, with false, overly-bright nostalgia coloring his tone.

Crowley squirmed against him discontentedly, pouting and huffing.

Aziraphale laughed, and curled his arms more carefully around Crowley in apology. One hand fell to the back of Crowley’s neck, the other to the small of his back, rucking his shirt up out of his trousers so Aziraphale’s knuckles could brush right against Crowley’s skin.

“You’re right, of course,” Aziraphale said, placating. They lie there for a few moments in a more content silence than they’d experienced in quite some time.

“I don’t think I understand all the way,” Aziraphale eventually admitted into the quiet.

“Don’t know if I do, either,” Crowley said.

“Maybe later we’ll talk more?”

Crowley nodded. “Later.”

A few more moments of silence. It wasn’t like they’d given up cuddling at all, but now Aziraphale’s hands on Crowley had a kind of _intention_ that they hadn’t held in ages. The weight of Aziraphale’s hands at his neck and at the small of his back made him feel held and safe. Aziraphale was holding Crowley like Crowley was _his_ — which of course he was; and Aziraphale was Crowley’s — and he was no longer being timid about it.

Aware as he was of Aziraphale’s hands, he slowly noticed the restless movement of the hand low on his back, fingertips brushing minutely at his skin, barely grasping and releasing fitfully.

“Darling,” Aziraphale said, his voice low and breathy in a way Crowley hadn’t heard for months. “This may be an imposition. But, ah — I wonder if you might be amenable…”

The other shoe dropped, and Crowley laughed, delighted, and arched against Aziraphale, who grasped at Crowley’s back and groaned a little.

Then Crowley dropped down into the cuddle they’d been sharing, stopped, and Aziraphale stopped as well. He’d clearly stopped breathing too, waiting for an answer from Crowley.

Crowley thought about it. Here it was. He’d been angling for this for months now. And Aziraphale was finally going to give it to him.

But he thought about having sex, and the thought made his stomach flip unpleasantly and his heart clench tightly in his chest.

But he’d been hoping for this for quite some time. And Aziraphale had _finally_ caught on. What would happen if Crowley said no, now? Surely he had to say yes, now Aziraphale was offering.

“Um,” he said, instead of an appropriate answer.

“Dearest?” Aziraphale asked, still hardly moving under Crowley, hands respectfully (if somewhat stiffly) motionless.

“If I say no, you’ll still ask me again? Later?” Crowley bit out in a rush.

Aziraphale relaxed under him and let his hands move on Crowley’s back again, stroking at him in reassurance rather than as a prelude to other activities. “Of _course_ I will,” he promised. 

Crowley took in a shuddery breath. “Maybe no, then?”

“That’s fine,” Aziraphale said. “My sweet boy. That’s more than fine.”

Crowley lifted his head from where he’d been resting it on Aziraphale’s shoulder, feeling very brave all of a sudden.

“Maybe just a little kiss though,” he offered.

Aziraphale’s face, already looking very soft and indulgent, lit up. “A little kiss sounds like just the ticket,” he agreed.

It was a very lovely kiss for all parties, in the end. It had a bit more tongue than had made an appearance in the preceding months, and yet not so much as to be overwhelming. In all things, balance.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> They're finally talking!! Bless.
> 
> Thank you all, as ever, for reading. Just a couple chapters left! I've been so happy to get to share this. Thanks to you all for the comments and kudos and all -- they warm my little heart.
> 
> I'm [missgiven](https://missgiven.tumblr.com/) on tumblr if you'd like to hang out. Take care and see y'all next weekend!


	10. Chapter 10

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Content warnings at end!

They ended up having sex the next morning, which, while less of an unmitigated disaster than it could have been, hardly inspired any great confidence in either party.

Aziraphale lost his nerve part way through and kept asking Crowley if he was _sure_ , if he was _really sure._ Crowley, who was fairly sure, yes, but still felt a little spooked about the whole sex thing, was in no fit state to offer adequate reassurance.

Orgasms were achieved, but neither of them felt entirely satisfied, and the cuddles they shared following their experience took on a markedly desperate cast.

* * *

“ But how can I be _sure_ you’re consenting?” Aziraphale asked over his third fortifying tea of the morning. 

“Er,” Crowley said, feeling sort of insulted. “Because I said yes?”

“Oh but _anyone_ can say yes to sex!” Aziraphale said in something remarkably close to a wail.

"Well, I'm not exactly _anyone_ , am I?" 

“Oh, you know what I mean. If you're incapable of feeling sexual attraction, and this whole lark is just for my sake, who’s to say I’m not…coercing you?”

Crowley felt distinctly insulted by that point. “Well, Aziraphale, I suppose you’ll just have to take my word that I’m not feeling coerced, won’t you?”

“But surely there’s a — a power differential we ought to consider.”

Crowley looked over the top of the home-dec magazine he’d been glancing through and shot Aziraphale a piercing look. “Really? You? The _principality_ with, I'm sorry, how many was it again, human partners in his past? You. Are worried about the power differential between yourself and your sexual partner?”

Aziraphale glared back. “I’m sure I couldn’t possibly know what you mean,” he said, punctuating the barefaced lie with a sniff.

“I’m just saying,” Crowley said, turning back to an engaging article about window dressings. 

Aziraphale huffed and went off to prepare fortifying tea number four.

* * *

“All I’m saying,” Aziraphale said, grabbing another bacon sandwich from a platter of bacon sandwiches that didn’t seem to be diminishing, “Is that it doesn’t seem right to do a thing that only I want to do.”

Crowley paused in his scrubbing. (Aziraphale’s vibrating high-stress energy had rubbed off on Crowley, who was stress-cleaning the oven to keep up.) “Well, we did have something of a row about how I want it too, you know. Just last night, I think it was.”

A bit of bread crust hit Crowley’s ear. He turned around to give Aziraphale a shocked look. Throwing bread crust indeed!

“I don’t want to see that face, Anthony Crowley,” said Aziraphale, looking very righteous. “I’m sorry if I’m _bothering_ you in trying to work out the boundaries of this frankly confusing new situation.”

Oh, that did pinch at Crowley’s heart a little. 

“All right, maybe I am being a little sarcastic,” he said, and set about pulling off the rubber gloves he was wearing. When he’d finished, he stood up and came to give Aziraphale a hug around the shoulders from behind his chair. Aziraphale remained stiff and unyielding for a moment, until Crowley pressed a tender kiss against his temple, and then he sighed and slumped a little.

“I’m sorry,” he said to the side of Aziraphale’s head. “It’s not easy for me either.”

Aziraphale reached up and patted Crowley’s hands. “I know, dearest.”

* * *

“So you don’t want to have sex with me,” Aziraphale said, which was a very brave start, “Except for you do. Also.”

“I like it once we get going,” Crowley offered. “I mean, usually. Maybe not always.”

Aziraphale took a bracing sip of his after-dinner scotch. “Right.”

* * *

“I think I have it,” Crowley said, rather too much wine later. “It’sss like paper quilling.”

He preened, feeling proud of himself. This was surely the ticket.

But Aziraphale, to Crowley’s surprise, only frowned back at him from his spot in the armchair. They’d both slumped somewhat in their seats and their ankles were touching.

“What’s like paper quilling?” he asked.

Crowley frowned as well. “Sex,” he said, irritated that Aziraphale wasn’t keeping up.

“Sex,” Aziraphale said, very slowly. “Is like. Paper quilling?”

“Course it is,” Crowley said. “Obviously.”

“Obviously,” Aziraphale echoed, but he still didn’t sound convinced. “How is it like paper quilling, exactly?”

Crowley blew out a frustrated breath before remembering, vaguely, his earlier commitment to being more patient in explaining himself. 

“All right,” he said, gearing up for a fully patient and coherent explanation. “All right.”

“All right,” Aziraphale said, egging him on.

“Ssso. So,” Crowley began. “I don’t understand all of that rolling and pinching and all, do I? Doesn’t make sense, like. You roll it this way. You unroll it that way. You crease it here, but if you crease it there the whole thing falls apart.”

“How would creasing make a thing fall apart?” Aziraphale asked, sounding genuinely curious.

After a moment of thought, Crowley conceded, “So maybe it wouldn’t. Told you I don’t understand paper quilling. Anyway. Don’t understand the stuff. And say, ah, say you _really_ like paper quilling.”

“I mean it’s a rem— remar— very good art form,” Aziraphale said. “But I can’t say I have a great interest in it.”

“No, I mean — just say you did. ’s a hypo-whatsit.”

“Hypothetical?” Aziraphale supplied, as if he hadn’t just forgot the word “remarkable” himself.

“That one. So we’re imagining you really like paper quilling. And you say to me, hey there, Crowley my boy! What do you say to coming along to do my paper quilling with me.” Crowley took another sip of wine to help himself along.

“At our house? Or is this like a workshop?”

“Er. Either one. Take your pick.”

“And paper quilling means sex here? A workshop would be very kinky of us,” Aziraphale said, giggling into his glass.

Crowley lifted a foot and used it to gently kick one of Aziraphale’s. “Fine, then it’s doing paper quilling at home, you — you débauché.” 

“Débauché,” Aziraphale repeated, delighted and still chuckling a little.

“ _So anyhow_ , you ask me to do paper quilling with you, don’t you, because you’re just mad for rolling paper into clever shapes, and you’re also mad about me — ” he paused. “You are, right?”

“Of _course_ I am,” Aziraphale assured him. He stopped giggling and his voice went all serious and he leaned forward to cup Crowley’s cheek in one soft hand. “I _love_ you.”

Since they had become lovers, serious declarations of love had generally happened at a minimum of once per night when they’d been drinking. Like always, Crowley blushed and turned his face into Aziraphale’s hand, then flicked his eyes back to Aziraphale.

“I love you too, angel,” he said, just as soft and serious.

Then he shook himself and got back to work. “So you’re mad for paper quilling and you’re mad for me so you want me to come and do the paper quilling with you,” he said, and felt pleased for getting so far along in his explanation all in one go.

“But you don’t like paper quilling?” Aziraphale asked.

“I mean I don’t understand it, like I said,” Crowley explained patiently. (Doing very well at this patience thing, he was.) “And so maybe it’s not my favorite to do _all_ the time. And I _certainly_ wouldn’t go off and do any of this paper quilling business with just anybody. _But_ , maybe if you asked me to I’d give it a go. Since I’m mad about you too, and all.”

“But if we’re mad for each other why would I ask you to do something you don’t actually like very much?” Aziraphale asked, looking sort of forlorn. “I could just…ask another friend. I suppose.”

Crowley blanched. “You’d want someone else to do paper quilling with you?”

“No!” Aziraphale cried. “Nononono! Maybe I could just…also do paper quilling by myself? In this metaphor?”

“Well of course you can do paper quilling by yourself whenever you like,” agreed Crowley. “That would be lovely.”

“All right,” Aziraphale said. “So if I can do paper quilling by myself, why bother you by asking you along if you won’t enjoy it?”  


Ah, yes — Crowley had got a bit lost but this was really the key to the explanation.

“Right,” he said, and tapped a finger against the side of his nose. “But I _will_ enjoy it.” He pointed his finger at Aziraphale with a quick wink and sat back on the sofa, pleased with a concept well explained.

“But I thought you didn’t like…paper quilling?”

Crowley reminded himself again to be patient. It wasn’t Aziraphale’s fault he was a bit slow after a bottle and a half of wine.

“But _you_ like paper quilling,” he reminded Aziraphale, certain he’d get it this time.

Aziraphale did not, unfortunately, get it. 

“Crowley, I don’t _understand,_ ” he said.

“So if I’m with my paper quilling lover,” Crowley explained slowly, “And maybe paper quilling doesn’t come naturally to me, and maybe I wouldn’t ever think to do the paper quilling myself, or like it for its own sake, but sometimes after I get started, once I’ve got into the swing of all that rolling business, _then_ I have fun, and anyway I _always_ have fun watching my lover have fun…I’d probably say yes pretty happily if he asked me to do paper quilling with him.”

A light dawned in Aziraphale’s eyes. It was a very dim light, but it looked like it was growing.

“So you’d… _want_ to be invited to do paper quilling with me? Even though you don’t see the appeal solely for its own merits?”

“I’d be sad if you didn’t invite me, I expect.”

“Would you really?”

“Well, if I know how much you like something, and you don’t want to share it with me, yes I’d be sad!”

Aziraphale was fully smiling by now. “You’d really want to do paper quilling with me?”

Crowley grinned dopily back at him. “Yeah.”

“And if you had maybe…done too much paper quilling recently, and were feeling sort of tired of it, you’d let me know when I asked?” Aziraphale asked.

“Course I would,” Crowley assured him. 

“And maybe…if we were in the middle of doing paper quilling but something made you feel like you needed to stop, you would tell me so we could stop?” he pressed.

“Abssolutely. You wouldn’t be angry or upset? Even if we had to stop in the middle of one of those fiddly little shapes?”

“Oh of _course_ I wouldn’t be angry or upset,” Aziraphale said, looking happier and happier by the minute. 

They grinned at each other for a bright, lovely little moment.

“That’s awfully nice you’d want to do paper quilling with me, my dear,” Aziraphale said at length. “And that you’d get something out of the process.”

“Not just the process. The pictures you get as a result _are_ really pretty, too.”

“Are they really?” 

“The paper quilling pictures are a metaphor for an orgasm,” Crowley pointed out helpfully.

“Is that so?” Aziraphale asked, getting up from the armchair and coming to crowd into Crowley’s space on the sofa. 

“Just wanted to make sure you got that part,” Crowley said breathlessly as Aziraphale ran his fingers through Crowley’s hair and cradled the back of his head, drawing in close.

Aziraphale kissed Crowley very softly and Crowley gasped into his mouth. 

“Have you had enough paper quilling for today, my dear?” Aziraphale asked.

Crowley whined and wrapped his arms and legs around Aziraphale. It felt like Aziraphale was halfway hard against him, which made him feel badly for what he was about to say. “I think I maybe have, to tell you the truth.”

Any worries Crowley had were dispelled when Aziraphale placed another terribly soft kiss on his forehead. “That’s more than all right. All’s well. Paper quilling or no.”

Thus reassured, Crowley felt more capable of being something of a minx. He wiggled just a little against Aziraphale. “Any need for you to go off and do some solo paper quilling?”

Aziraphale just grasped Crowley’s hip in one strong hand and stilled him. Crowley had to do a quick recalculation as to whether or not he’d consider another round. Still no, but a far less firm no what with Aziraphale pressing his hip down like that and giving him a stern look. Predictable of him, really.

“What we’ll be doing, darling,” Aziraphale said, and Crowley always loved this, when Aziraphale got fussy and bossy, “Is retiring to bed for a cuddle. I’ll read and you’ll go to sleep and while you’re getting to sleep, my boy, you’ll keep your tempting hips still, do you understand?” 

The stern tone would have worked far better without Aziraphale’s thumb drawing circles onto Crowley’s hip and a smile fighting to make its way onto his mouth.

“Yes, _sir_ ,” Crowley purred up at him.

Aziraphale squeezed Crowley’s hip, which made Crowley squawk, and tried to extricate himself from Crowley’s limbs and straighten up.

Crowley was having none of it and squeezed onto Aziraphale even more tightly, so by the time Aziraphale was at his full height, he had a Crowley wrapped around his torso and had to wrap his arms around Crowley’s bottom to accommodate him.

“Incorrigible brat of a demon,” Aziraphale tutted, walking them off to bed with Crowley attached firmly to his front.

“Strong, manly angel,” Crowley countered. “ _Virile,_ absolutely virile _._ So sturdy and muscular. Just holds me right in his arms and carries little old me around like I weigh _nothing_ , he does!”

Aziraphale deposited (tossed) Crowley on their bed affectionately and went to retrieve their pajamas.

“You’re a dreadful man,” Aziraphale told him matter-of-factly as they dressed for bed.

“The worst,” Crowley agreed happily. 

“Also unaccountably perfect. That as well,” Aziraphale said, climbing into bed next to Crowley and cuddling up close.

“Well,” Crowley said, cuddling back, “It takes one to know one, I suppose.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> CW: Canon typical alcohol use, discussion about sex, overextended metaphors.
> 
> \---
> 
> Thank you so much for reading!! The response last chapter was particularly exciting. Thanks for all the kind words. :) 
> 
> This is honestly my favorite chapter yet -- hope you've enjoyed.
> 
> Take good care! See y'all next week!
> 
> \---
> 
> Added 11/29: Not sure if anyone will see this! But if anyone *is* missing an update, and comes here to check, here goes: I will not be able to update this weekend. And unfortunately maybe not next weekend. I am HOPING to update by next weekend, but I will DEFINITELY update by the weekend following (the weekend around 12/12.) I'm just a simple person who didn't math cleverly enough to realize that I had everything written except for the part that would need to go up right at the end of the semester, when I have deadlines on Massive Research Papers that sadly do need to take priority, and have taken way too much mental steam in the last month to allow for writing the next chapter.
> 
> I'd like to apologize very sincerely for that oversight. I'm really looking forward to posting the final chapter (maybe two chapters...shifty eyes, &c), I just need to get through finals week first. Again: I'm really sorry not to carry on with the posting schedule, and thank you so so so much for your comments and kudos and understanding. See y'all soon. - K


	11. Chapter 11

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hello! I do apologize for the last two weekends of radio silence. I posted a little note on the last chapter but in case anyone didn't see it, basically, I had three massive grad school deadlines come up all at once and they totally wiped me out. And I didn't really do adequate math the weekend I began posting and I didn't realize I'd run out of existing work right when I did! So that's my mistake. I'm glad to be back now.
> 
> Also, the chapter count went up by one. So there's that.
> 
> Chapter warnings at the end.
> 
> Also a general note, worth mentioning up here: as the first few lines/paragraphs imply, this is just a chapter about having (fairly) good sex as an ace person with a non-ace person. Just. So you know!

It was, in fact, another week or two (maybe three? Crowley lost count, actually) before they attempted sex again.

But when they did — _wow_.

If Crowley had known having sex with a new identity label would be this good, he would have done some self-searching far, far sooner.

It happened, appropriately enough, on a date night.

There was a new little French brasserie opening up in Brighton, and Aziraphale insisted they go and “make an evening of it,” and so time for a date night it was.

It seemed like as good an opportunity as any, then. Crowley was cognizant that it had been some weeks past since any sexual activity had happened, and he thought it might have come time to change that. He felt ever so slightly bereft — not bereft of sex, exactly, but rather bereft of a certain key part of Aziraphale. 

Well, he felt pretty confident that a spot of tempting might work. Now that Aziraphale knew where he was coming from. 

With that in mind, as he dressed for their evening out, he pulled on the tiniest black briefs he had considered too obscene for a seduction weeks earlier. They did pinch a bit, but before Crowley could reconsider, he heard Aziraphale swear softly from the ensuite.

“All right, angel?”

“Yes,” Aziraphale said, sounding both breathless and annoyed. 

Crowley sauntered over to the doorway and leaned in it casually, folding his arms over his bare chest. Aziraphale had a bit of shaving soap on his ear and was dabbing at a little cut on his chin with a styptic pencil. 

“Hand slipped?”

Aziraphale gave him a sideways glance and his eyes obviously flicked down and back up Crowley’s nominally clothed form. 

“Caught sight of you out of the corner of my eye, I’m afraid,” Aziraphale said, finishing up with the pencil. “You’re looking rather fetching. If I may.”

Crowley grinned. “I _suppose_ that’s all right for my lover to ogle me.”

“Serpent,” Aziraphale muttered, splashing his face with aftershave. The sharp, warm scent wafted its way over to Crowley, whose stomach gave a little excited flip.

“Maybe you’ll need to do something about it,” Crowley goaded. “You haven’t, in a while.”

“Go get dressed,” Aziraphale told him, eyes trained carefully forward on his own reflection and away from Crowley’s essentially naked form. “Maybe I’ll bring some handsome young thing home from the restaurant and show him a good time. But I’ll buy him dinner first at least. And I don’t suppose we’ll even make it to dinner if said handsome young thing doesn’t put a shirt on, and soon.”

Crowley cackled, feeling delighted with the direction the evening was taking, and went to dress.

The new brasserie was good, but probably not good enough to replace their usual. But they sat on the same side of the table, their thighs touching, and such indulgent romance went a long way to endear the restaurant to each of them. After dinner, Crowley went for the crème brûlée and Aziraphale for a small cheese and fruit platter. As the evening was properly winding down, Aziraphale cut off a piece of an exquisitely aged gouda and held it out to Crowley, but wouldn’t let him take it in his hand. 

“No, darling, here,” Aziraphale said in that soft voice of his, and touched the bit of cheese to Crowley’s lower lip. 

Oh, wow.

Crowley opened his mouth and took the morsel very very delicately in between his teeth. He could feel Aziraphale’s eyes on his face but he was blushing far too much to meet the eye contact.

Aziraphale pressed a soft kiss to Crowley’s burning cheek, pressed a thumb softly at his lips. “Well done,” he said.

It could then be argued that Crowley was experiencing something that could only be described as _arousal_. The very quiet whine he couldn’t contain was one of the key indicators. Another indicator was the not insignificant stirring he felt in his lap.

“We should go,” Crowley managed.

He was sure, after that, that he had paid the tab. Or Aziraphale had. Maybe he wasn’t so sure.

He must have driven them home, though, because then Aziraphale was crowding him against their front door and kissing him on the neck in a way that would have scandalized the neighbors, had they had any close enough ones to be scandalized.

Aziraphale’s lips were soft and hot against his throat, and one of his hands was in Crowley’s hair and the other was wrapped around Crowley’s waist under his jacket. 

This was incredible. Half of Crowley was melting under Aziraphale, whimpering and hardening further in his trousers, and half of Crowley was still thinking clear-headed, ridiculous things like _this was incredible_. 

It really was incredible though, because this was usually the part of things where Crowley had previously started berating himself for not being as lost to the sexual passion as Aziraphale seemed to be. But, he thought proudly, gasping as Aziraphale’s tongue got in on the action right underneath Crowley’s ear, it was _completely fine_ that he didn’t feel whatever urge he ought to (“ought to!”) be feeling right now. So. Take that, self-deprecation. 

They finally got through the door, but in the middle of the hallway, when Crowley was deeply enjoying being led slowly back to their bedroom by way of kisses and lustful touches, Aziraphale seemed to catch himself.

“Are you all right?” he asked, pulling his hands off of Crowley’s bottom and running them instead soothingly over his shoulders. 

“Um,” Crowley said, feeling a bit cold now that Aziraphale wasn’t pressed right up against him, “Yes?”

“That is to say,” Aziraphale said, breathing hard and looking contrite, “Do you want this, my dear?”

“Um,” Crowley said again. He sort of gestured down at his crotch helplessly. “I’d say that’s pretty clear?”

Much to his disappointment, Aziraphale only frowned. “I haven’t given you much of a chance to say otherwise, and I won’t take your body’s responses over hearing a proper yes from you. I shouldn’t have pushed as much as I did without checking. Do you wish to continue?”

Crowley felt both deeply in love and deeply exasperated.

“Yes, I do,” Crowley said, “You utter — ”

But whatever fond insult Crowley had been about to lob Aziraphale’s way, neither of them found out, because Aziraphale shocked him into quiet by wrapping him in a great, all-consuming hug.

Crowley’s arms wrapped around Aziraphale’s back instinctively. It was something of a whiplash from the impassioned kisses of just a moment ago, but a welcome one. 

“I’m so happy to be with you in this way,” Aziraphale whispered into Crowley’s ear. “If you hadn’t wanted this it would have been _fine_. Truly, it would. But since you do —” He stopped, seemingly overcome, and pressed a quick kiss to the side of Crowley’s head. “And darling, if you wish to stop you _must_ tell me at once. Do you understand?”

Crowley nodded, feeling rather overcome himself.

They held each other in the hallway a moment longer, clinging and grateful.

Slowly, Crowley began to notice that they were both still fairly affected from the earlier kisses. He rocked his hips a little. Aziraphale let out a breathy little moan and grabbed at Crowley’s back.

“You know,” Crowley said. “I do want this.” He rocked his hips again and Aziraphale made a noise like “mm!” as his hips stuttered against Crowley’s.

Oh, but this was fun. Just watching Aziraphale start to lose control just a little, watching Aziraphale want him. 

“You can kiss me like you were earlier,” he offered, pressing a kiss up to Aziraphale’s neck (Aziraphale gasped and arched his neck to offer the rest of it to Crowley), “you can touch me anywhere you like,” (Aziraphale’s hands grasped Crowley’s hips), “you can _take me_ — ”

The temptation worked, and Aziraphale pulled them both down the hallway and into the bedroom.

And wow, yeah, when Crowley stopped with the running commentary about how he "should" be responding to Aziraphale, he ended up having a truly great time.

He got a little spooked, or overwhelmed, or something, when they got their clothes off, and hid his face in Aziraphale’s broad chest for a few minutes, breathing heavily and trying to recalibrate. Aziraphale rubbed his back with slow, firm strokes, and spoke to him gently until he was ready to keep going. That was truly _excellent_ , taking a break and letting himself be soothed and carrying on only when he was ready. No wonder he’d hated sex before, pushing through a thing like that.

It got even better after that, as if by proving he could stop, he no longer felt the need to.

“I’d like to take you apart, please,” Aziraphale said, very politely, as they warmed back up from their short break. He ran a hand down the outside of one of Crowley’s thighs.

“I don’t know if that’ll work,” Crowley confessed. He liked when Aziraphale was in charge of the operations, but he was still feeling remarkably clear headed, and wasn’t sure if that would be going away anytime soon. “Sounds nice, though.”

“Mmm,” Aziraphale said, a considering noise as he kissed down Crowley’s stomach and Crowley jerked and gasped a little. “If it doesn’t, that’s too bad, but no harm done. Would it be all right if I try?”

He kissed Crowley’s hipbone at that point, and Crowley yelped and his hips twitched up of their own volition. 

“S’pose you can, yeah,” he offered, deciding to submit himself to Aziraphale’s wishes, at least for a few moments. If it would make Aziraphale happy, he’d try anything once.

Come to find out, Aziraphale _could_ take Crowley apart.

First, he sucked at Crowley’s cock a little, and Crowley jerked back from the sensation, not in an entirely pleasant way either.

“Too much,” he explained, reeling unhappily from the wash of overstimulation. “Sorry.”

Aziraphale just petted his hip and told him it was all fine.

He went back to work then, but was even more slow and careful in his touches. Crowley felt a little silly, because many of the touches either felt neutral, as if Aziraphale was touching his arm or something, or just unpleasant. Had sex always felt like this? Had he just been ignoring how lackluster it felt? How dreadful.

He was about to call off the whole ordeal when Aziraphale tongued at a spot that made Crowley’s whole spine shiver in pleasure. He groaned, loudly and without expecting to, and pushed his hips up when Aziraphale’s mouth retreated.

“Is that so?” Aziraphale said, looking up at Crowley like the cat that had got the cream.

“Gnhh,” Crowley said.

Aziraphale dove back in eagerly, starting with the spot that had got such a reaction out of Crowley and then somehow finding more such tender places. 

That, Crowley thought, as he writhed with pleasure under Aziraphale’s hands and mouth, was really remarkable. He still had a particularly clear-headed timbre to his thoughts, but he wasn’t sure that he could share any of them with any particular clarity. He was too busy making far too many embarrassing noises to be sharing his thoughts verbally. But then again, most of his thoughts were about how delightful Aziraphale’s mouth was and how grateful he was that this was going so well, and perhaps the moans and (o horror) squeals he was making communicated those thoughts effectively enough anyway.

When Aziraphale had first taken him in his mouth a few moments ago, it had been too much too soon and not very pleasant, but now that he’d been worked up properly, Aziraphale took him in his mouth again and Crowley _yelled_. 

He came not too long after that. His brain actually shut up for the duration. He had been onto something earlier — orgasms _were_ a bit of all right.

“Darling,” Aziraphale breathed, looking up at him reverently. “Very well done, my dear.” 

Crowley lifted up his head to give him a hazy sort of smile, then dropped back down to rest on the pillow. Aziraphale, he realized (that orgasm really took it out of him), was still speaking softly, and still touching him, petting softly around his thighs.

“You took that so well, Crowley,” Aziraphale was saying. “I loved finding what you wanted from me. I loved giving it to you.”

“Mmmm,” Crowley said. He was tender emotionally as well as physically following such an intense climax, and he felt some tears prickling behind his eyes at Aziraphale’s kind words.

“You were so beautiful, you know,” Aziraphale continued. His hands were still stroking at Crowley’s thighs, but in more decidedly _in_ and _up_ directions. “Lying there and taking my hand around you, my mouth. You make the most beautiful sounds.”

It was a good thing Aziraphale thought his sounds were beautiful, Crowley thought, because he made a loud one as one of Aziraphale’s fingers brushed between the cheeks of his bottom and grazed the little sphincter muscle there. 

He remembered liking _this_ from before their great realization about his sexuality. In the past, he had had trouble with sex acts that focused on only one of them at a time, but had rarely had trouble with sex with Aziraphale, you know, inside him. 

“Please,” he said, suddenly wanting that very desperately. “Please do it fast, do it with a miracle, just get up here, please — ”

Aziraphale did not, as a rule, hold with the use of miracles during sex. (“I like the feeling of your arse clenching around my fingers, darling,” he had often said, usually already at least one finger deep, and Crowley _liked_ when Aziraphale was explicit in his language, so it usually led to Crowley’s arse doing just that.) But Aziraphale relented easily this time, and gave a quick snap, and Crowley felt the little muscle relax.

“That was very good of you to tell me,” Aziraphale said, coming up to kneel in between Crowley’s legs, smiling down at him indulgently. “I love to know the things that make you happy.”

Crowley was still in the shivery, near-tears place he’d got to following the first orgasm, and his cock had got hard again. 

“I want you to feel good,” he whispered, wrapping his legs around Aziraphale’s waist, trying to draw him into his body. As Aziraphale’s cock brushed his opening, he felt so content and shivery and overwhelmed but in a good way for once, and a tear slipped out of the corner of one eye.

“Stop, love, _stop_ ,” Aziraphale said, hand going to still Crowley’s hips.

Crowley whined pitifully. The part of his brain that kept up running commentary thought he was acting silly, but the commentator didn’t seem to be running the show at the moment.

“You’re crying,” Aziraphale said, “Why?”

Bugger all, he had hoped Aziraphale wouldn’t make a big deal about his state of overwhelm. He squeezed his eyes shut and tried to think of the least embarrassing way to move past this quickly.

Not quick enough, unfortunately.

“I don’t need to penetrate you,” Aziraphale said, so incredibly softly, so kindly. “You mustn’t force yourself for me, Crowley, I’m _so_ pleased with what we’ve already done, I don’t need anything else, really — ”

“Aziraphale,” Crowley said, eyes still squeezed shut in embarrassment. “Please stop calling it _penetrating me_. And please _do it._ ”

“Darling, I worry about coercing you, you’re crying, please tell me — ”

“It’s a lot,” Crowley said. (Whined, more like.) “I’m overwhelmed. It’s too much. But I don’t want to stop, it’s too much in a good way for once. I think, at least. I think I have. I don’t know. Adrenaline. Lots of it. I don’t know, I feel funny, but I want you to, to fuck me, I do, please, I want you to make you feel good and I want to do it with my body and you can hold me and coddle me after but I would _really_ like it if you could fuck me until we both come again, please, and also stop making me talk about this, I’m about to go all soft again, so if you could please hurry, that would be nice, thank you.”

Aziraphale was, after all, intelligent, and knew what was good for him.

“Of course, darling,” he said, removing his hand from Crowley’s hip so he could caress Crowley’s face. “I’m glad you told me all that. My apologies, naturally, we’ll get right to it.”

And they did.

And it was very good.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> CW: Sexual content, constant negotiations/ruminations on continued consent for participation in the sexual content.
> 
> \--
> 
> Thank you all very kindly for reading! I hope you enjoyed it. I'll be back with the next (last!!) chapter next weekend. <3


	12. Chapter 12

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> My weekend writing plans went horribly awry. To make up for a later update, please have the longest, fluffiest chapter of this fic yet.
> 
> Content warnings are at the bottom, because even in fluff we get to have nuance and hard situations. But seriously -- so much fluff.

The coming months were filled with more learning and exploration than you could shake a stick at. It felt like the first few months of their relationship all over again, only somehow even better. 

Aziraphale surprised Crowley the very next day after they had their first successful sexual encounter following Crowley's realization about his sexuality, the subsequent disastrous miscommunication, and its resolution.

He had passed Crowley in the hall as they both puttered about their day and stopped to gather him into his arms and kiss him on the mouth. Rather a lot.

It was nice, Crowley thought, to be so wanted. He’d sort of been on the way to the kitchen to knock up some afternoon treats, though, and Aziraphale stopping him thusly in the middle of such an errand was a little difficult to bear. But he _did_ like feeling wanted, and he _did_ want to make Aziraphale happy, and so he went along with it.

But right as Crowley was expecting the several smaller kisses to build up into something that might be called _snogging_ , Aziraphale pulled back and looked at him curiously.

“Is it not a kissing day, darling?”

Crowley blinked up at him. “What?”

“You’re pulling away from my kisses, ever so slightly. I recall that you said in the past that sometimes you didn’t wish to be kissed on the mouth. And so I'm wondering if today is one of those days.”

Realization dawned, and with it, a terribly warm and exciting feeling of being known implicitly. 

“Didn’t know I was doing that,” Crowley said, a dopey grin making its way across his face. “But, uh, yeah. No, yeah, I think you’re right, angel.” A shot of worry. “That’s okay, right?”

Aziraphale kissed his forehead so tenderly Crowley thought he might burst. “Of course it is.”

* * *

Sometimes, Crowley surprised himself, like the evening he decided he’d like Aziraphale’s cock in his mouth, thank you. 

Aziraphale had been a little handsy that evening, with fingers trailing over Crowley’s wrists whenever he could get away with it, and pressing up close behind him as he did the washing up, and eventually inviting Crowley to curl up in his lap rather than sprawl out on the sofa like usual.

Once Crowley was in his lap, Aziraphale set about having his wicked way with him.

Aziraphale had slowly once again taken the role of initiator when it came to their sexual activities, and Crowley was very pleased about it, too. He shuddered to recall his months of failed seduction attempts. He really wasn’t cut out for such things, and it felt much nicer when Aziraphale was the one seducing him. There was the problem of mismatched libido — if Crowley was responsible for any and all initiation, they’d only _engage in coitus_ (as Aziraphale might say) once every month or two. That was plenty for him, but before their realization, Aziraphale had initiated sex several times a week. It felt good to find a happy medium between their levels of desire, and that happy medium was more easily found if Aziraphale invited him to certain activities with some regularity, rather than waiting for Crowley to realize that enough time had passed and perhaps he ought to be doing something.

Crowley also often needed some convincing, although Aziraphale preferred to think of it as _warming up_. For his part, Crowley thoroughly enjoyed being convinced. 

Like this evening, when Aziraphale had been broadcasting some kind of intention for the better part of two hours, and how had one arm wrapped firm around Crowley’s waist and was stroking fine shivery lines on Crowley’s neck with his other hand. Every so often he replaced the fingers with a gentle kiss, right below Crowley’s ear. Crowley was in the early stages of arousal where he had to decide if it was welcome or an annoyance, but he was feeling fairly welcoming this time around. He moaned a little, enjoying the sensations from Aziraphale’s touch and egging him on. 

By the time Aziraphale kissed him properly, Crowley felt warm all over, and he also felt a particular pull he didn’t often feel. Maybe it was the asexuality, maybe it was the generalized anxiety, maybe it was just a response to Aziraphale’s energy, but Crowley was often the more passive party in their sexual encounters. (Aziraphale had once, years ago, lovingly teased him about being a “pillow princess,” but Crowley had got so worked up that maybe he wasn’t doing enough that Aziraphale hadn’t mentioned it since. They’d both grown since then, of course.) 

It wasn’t that he didn’t like Aziraphale’s cock in his mouth (well, sometimes he didn’t, but he was complicated; it was fine), it’s just that it was usually the result of a request or reciprocity. But that particular evening, by the time they’d made it to the bedroom and undressed one another, Crowley had decided that he had an idea, and crawled down to settle in between Aziraphale’s legs to facilitate it.

He looked up at Aziraphale from his new position, and Aziraphale looked back at him wonderingly.

“I’d like to,” Crowley started. “Um.” He kissed the crease of Aziraphale’s thigh, face very close to his cock. “I’d like to. Sssuck your cock, please.” It was hard to be that clear in his language, and he hissed with the embarrassment of it, but the blissful look that came over Aziraphale’s face was worth it.

“Darling,” Aziraphale breathed. “If you’re quite sure. That’s more than all right.”

Because the thing was, Crowley thought as he got his mouth around it, this was actually delightful. He liked the stretch of his lips, the feeling of his mouth being full. And there was no use denying it: being somewhat snakey in one’s fundamental essence may not come with many perks, but the use of one’s tongue was a definite highlight. He flicked it at the underside of Aziraphale’s cock and Aziraphale shouted. Yes, Crowley definitely liked the things he could do with his tongue.

He also liked the way Aziraphale got lost in the sensations he could give him. He liked when he made Aziraphale feel good, and he always found using his hands to be sort of overwhelming and confusing (maybe that was due to the snake bits, too?), but he could _work_ with his mouth. And Aziraphale certainly seemed to appreciate it, up above him. He got his hands in Crowley’s hair, which felt amazing, and couldn’t help but buck his hips a little. Aziraphale took pains to be a considerate lover, so when he lost control and snapped his hips up, thrusting a little into Crowley’s mouth, it felt like a small victory. 

He had to do this more often, Crowley thought, as Aziraphale writhed and moaned above him. Aziraphale was so beautiful like this, mindlessly lost in pleasure. His thick thighs bracketed Crowley and made him feel small and safe. He made such gratifying and encouraging noises. It had taken Crowley a while to come to the realization, but yes, he would certainly need to do this more often.

Aziraphale seemed on the brink of coming — his hands in Crowley’s hair were grasping fitfully and he seemed less and less able to control the twitching and thrusting of his hips. Crowley moaned around his cock and stroked the outside of one fine thigh, urging him on.

Crowley swallowed when Aziraphale came. Snake, and all.

He sucked at him for a few moments more, until Aziraphale cried out in something closer to pain from the overstimulation, at which point Crowley pulled gently off his cock, rested his head on one of Aziraphale’s thighs, and smiled up at him, feeling very, very pleased.

It was probably a very charming look, but Aziraphale mostly missed it, keeping his eyes closed and and panting heavily as he was. Crowley just kept grinning up at him and stroked the inside of his thigh, enjoying the way the fine hairs felt under his fingers. Aziraphale post-orgasm was really a beautiful sight, all flushed and sated looking. It took him a while to properly recover, but he occasionally said things like, “good lord,” and “your mouth, darling, I can hardly stand it,” while he did, so Crowley reveled in a job well done and was very patient. He didn’t feel any urgency or need to continue, just felt soft and pleased and fairly sated himself.

When Aziraphale finally recovered, he opened his eyes and Fixed them on Crowley.

“Come here,” he said, in a low voice that made something pleasant wiggle in Crowley’s belly. 

Aziraphale reached out a hand and pulled Crowley up until Crowley was straddling his lap (good), flipped them over so _he_ was straddling _Crowley_ (very good), and lowered his head to press sweet, reverent kisses all over Crowley’s chest (extremely good!). 

Then Aziraphale moved lower and kissed at the point where Crowley’s thigh and stomach met. He looked up through his eyelashes at Crowley with an expression that seemed to promise, explicitly, multiple orgasms.

It felt, then, like Crowley’s heart stopped, and not in a good way.

“Um,” he said in a high, thin voice, the soft pleasantness of the previous moment gone.

Aziraphale pulled back slightly. “What’s wrong, my dear?”

He was still so close to Crowley’s bits that Crowley felt a puff of warm air on his penis when Aziraphale spoke. It twitched. He wished, suddenly, that it would go away.

“Don’t,” he began, and had to clear his throat. “Don’t wanna. Um. I’m sorry. I don’t know.”

Aziraphale looked very concerned. “You don’t wish to continue?” he offered.

Crowley nodded miserably.

“Was that all right, then?” Aziraphale pressed, face gone pale, “You sucking me off? Oh, dear, have I done everything horribly, darling?”

“Nuh,” Crowley said, and forced himself to keep speaking, “Wanted to. Told you I did. Don’t know _why_ I did, but I did. Just wanted you to feel nice, you know? But I don’t want — that. For me. Right now.”

They really had come a long way, Crowley thought, feeling all sorts of gooey and grateful as Aziraphale smiled at him, then pressed a chaste kiss to the top of his thigh.

“I’ll get us a flannel to wash up,” Aziraphale said as he extricated himself from Crowley and got off the bed. He stopped to kiss Crowley’s forehead, and Crowley melted a little. “I’m so pleased you told me, my love.”

Well, that was a relief. He still wasn’t sure about all this _listening to his body_ business, but it had gone off much better than he’d expected.

He wriggled a little on the bed as he heard Aziraphale turning on the tap in the ensuite.

Come to think of it, if he was listening to what his silly corporation was telling him, it was still giving off some unpleasant signals.

His penis was still mostly hard, although rapidly (and blessedly) going down now that Aziraphale wasn’t hovering over it. But the unpleasant feeling wasn’t the annoyance of unwanted arousal, not exactly. He wasn’t sure what it was.

The tap switched off, and Aziraphale came back from the ensuite holding a damp flannel. Crowley took it from him.

“I feel funny,” he told Aziraphale as he dabbed at the head of his penis, where a little pre-ejaculate had come up.

Aziraphale was frowning thoughtfully at him. Crowley could tell, even as he studiously avoided looking at his face.

“And you’re very certain I didn’t misstep?” Aziraphale asked.

Crowley tossed the flannel into the laundry hamper with a little more force than was necessary.  
“Yes,” he said, feeling delicate and not trusting himself to elaborate.

“Would clothes help?”

“What?”

“Clothes. Wouldn’t they help? You don’t like to stay _en deshabille_ for very long, after all.”

Before Crowley could plod his way through the confusion that came with irresponsibly mixing “vague funniness after pleasuring your lover” and “incandescent happiness at being known,” Aziraphale was wiggling a pair of pyjama trousers at him.

“Up you get,” he said. “Trousers on, there’s a lad.”

In something of a haze, Crowley let himself be bullied gently into pyjamas, then back on the bed and curled firmly into Aziraphale’s side, Aziraphale’s strong arm wrapped tight around his back. Aziraphale had submitted to a thick, cozy dressing gown himself, and Crowley rubbed his face on the soft flannel fabric.

The pyjamas and the cuddles seemed to have the desired effect, and soon enough, Crowley had recovered the presence of mind to understand why he’d been feeling funny in the first place. 

“‘ve got it.” he said, although he didn’t, not all the way, not yet. “Want you to touch me.”

Aziraphale startled next to him. “Oh. Oh! You just, er, needed some time, then? Well, that’s all right — ”

“Not like that,” Crowley said, irrational panic spiking in his chest again. “I know it doesn’t make sense. I don’t want that but I want you to touch me.”

“Nonsexual touch?” Aziraphale clarified, and Crowley nodded. “Is this right, then?”

He was petting Crowley’s arm firmly, and they were cuddled as close as they could be, but it still didn’t feel exactly right. “Nn,” he said. “Like more. Focused. Like when you massage me, or something?”

(Classifying massage as “nonsexual touch” was, Crowley had recently learned, somewhat controversial. Aziraphale admitted to often feeling “turned on” by the “sexy noises” Crowley made when Aziraphale rubbed at his muscles when they ached from gardening and/or six thousand years of anxiety. Once Aziraphale had even had to excuse himself to the bathroom to take care of things. Crowley just felt delightfully warm and relaxed when massaged, or indeed when he massaged Aziraphale, and if pressed would categorize the noises he made more as “honking” than “sexy,” but to each their own. Aziraphale had insisted that his opinion was in the majority; Crowley’s in the minority, but Crowley wasn’t buying it.)

“Hmm,” Aziraphale said, nodding gravely next to Crowley. “What if I rubbed your feet?”

A few moments later, Crowley was sat on the edge of the bed, pyjama trousers pushed up to his knees and Aziraphale knelt in front of him. He held one of Crowley’s chilly feet in his warm hands, rubbing sweet scented oil into the skin and lovingly shoving his thumbs into the arch of Crowley’s foot. 

The light was soft and golden — when Aziraphale had fetched the oil, Crowley had lit a scented candle, and it was doing wonders for the mood. Crowley could _feel_ love pouring off Aziraphale and washing over him. The warm hands soothed out any tension Crowley hadn’t even known his feet possessed, and Crowley moaned softly. (He supposed, maybe, that he could understand how someone could misinterpret a sound like that as “sexy,” but he just felt blissful and content.) 

It felt almost unbearably special, having all of Aziraphale’s attention turned on him like this, caring for him, seeing to him in such a loving way. He felt vulnerable and quiet and open, and he felt Aziraphale holding him so, so gently in his hands, holding him safe and steady. Aziraphale’s blond head was mostly ducked down, keeping his eyes on Crowley’s feet, but occasionally he glanced up, and Crowley shook when he saw the expression of love in his eyes, and couldn’t do anything but stare back helplessly.

Eventually Aziraphale had rubbed the fragrant oil all over Crowley’s feet, up his skinny ankles and calves, and he sat back on his own heels, rubbing his hands with a towel he’d brought with him.

“There we are, my love,” he said, smiling at Crowley softly. 

“Gnh,” Crowley agreed, smiling back weakly, and flopped back on the bed.

* * *

The sex was not always good, of course. 

Sometimes it was silly — like the time they’d been ramping up to something, and Aziraphale had been fairly toppy that evening, and when he had to pause for a moment to get something, Crowley had felt momentarily lost.

  
“Er, what should I do while I wait for you?” he’d asked Aziraphale as he stepped out of the room. The crease of his thigh had itched, so he had scratched at it absentmindedly while he waited for the answer.

Aziraphale had turned around just in that moment and his eyes had zeroed in on Crowley’s lap.

“It looks as though you might already know what to do,” Aziraphale had purred, looking over Crowley appreciatively.

Crowley had realized then that it had looked like he was touching himself.

“Oh!” he’d said, embarrassed. “No. I’m not, uh. Doing that. Should I be? I was just, um, scratching…”

It was hard to say who had been more embarrassed that time, Aziraphale or Crowley, but they had eventually got it back together come through the other side with nothing more than bruised dignity and some very enjoyable orgasms.

Sometimes the not-good sex was truly a disaster, like the time Crowley had backed out entirely right as they got their pricks out and Aziraphale wrapped one wide hand around both.

“Stopstopstop,” Crowley had said, brain suddenly catching up to body as he’d realized he didn’t want this, actually, not after having sex on the preceding two days as well, that he needed his body to be his and not to share it and he needed to stop right away.

So he’d scrambled away, panicking somewhat and feeling badly for interrupting the flow of things when maybe he should have just gone along with it, and he’d looked at Aziraphale, looking for reassurance.

And Aziraphale was a gentleman, of course, and in hindsight the slightly exasperated look Crowley had seen on his face had been somewhat understandable, being interrupted at a key moment such as he had been. The frustrated expression had only lasted a second, and then Aziraphale had smiled gamely and told him “not to worry, dear boy, I’m glad you told me,” but by that point, between realizing he didn’t want to carry on with the sex and feeling gutted by the expression Aziraphale’s face when he was looking for comfort, Crowley had been in the throes of a panic attack.

That had not been a particularly good night. Aziraphale had offered some reassuring words, then waited quietly and calmly while Crowley spiraled next to him, and as soon as Crowley had calmed down enough to roll over and drop his head in Aziraphale’s lap, Aziraphale had been ready to offer sweet apologies, comforting words, and pets to his hair. Then he’d fixed them both some cocoa.

But of course, even their dreadful times together ended with reconciliation and general togetherness, so nothing was ever that bad for that long.

And, inevitable bad nights aside, most of the sex they had going forward was fairly lovely. Aziraphale loved to take care of Crowley and spoil him with thrilling touches and plenty of orgasms, and also got better at spoiling him in other ways when Crowley didn’t care for the orgasms this week, thank you. Crowley loved to make Aziraphale feel good, and found he was far better at it now that he wasn’t expecting himself to feel any kind of way. There was bad sex, there was fairly neutral sex, and there was good sex, but honestly? Mostly, there was good sex.

* * *

They found plenty of moments of intimacy beyond just their mutually satisfying sex life, too. It was a treat, after six thousand years of work, work, work, to settle down quietly and enjoy one another as they got on living like humans. 

Aziraphale usually did the shopping, but sometimes Crowley would tag along. They bickered softly in the supermarket — Crowley liked to sneak interesting things into the trolley when Aziraphale wasn’t looking, and Aziraphale liked to wrap back to the samples counter for seconds. They both fussed at the other one for their habits, and they both liked that immensely.

Hands! Holding hands was another one, neither of them could get enough of holding hands. During the errands they ran, or out on walks or sitting in the garden, or while reading after dinner. 

Their meals together, too — those had been an old hallmark of their intimacy for millennia, and Crowley was grateful there was no end in sight. The quiet routine of making food (or ordering in, or going out) and eating it together marked a rhythm of bright, gentle sparks of intimacy throughout their days.

One time, Aziraphale got Crowley back in the bathtub, saying he was intent on finishing what Crowley had started months ago with his failed Seduction of the Bath. Crowley went in expecting to be ravished within an inch of his life, and felt he would have enjoyed that, but Aziraphale instead just bathed him. 

Following that, Aziraphale developed a _thing_ for washing Crowley’s hair. He’d draw a bath for Crowley, or sometimes manage to pop up when Crowley was in the bath by himself, or join him in the shower. He would scrub at Crowley’s scalp with his luxurious shampoo until Crowley could hardly hold himself upright, only sag against the side of the bath or, preferably, Aziraphale himself.

“I love to touch you, you know,” Aziraphale said after one such occasion, wrapping a towel around a very pliant Crowley and dabbing it at his shoulders. “I’m glad to know that you like to make love less frequently than we used to, and I’m so glad you’ve learned about this part of yourself. Yet I still feel the strongest need to touch you as much as I ever did. So it’s lovely to care for you, like this.”

“Lovely angel,” Crowley murmured into Aziraphale’s chest, relaxed and happy and unable to say much else.

“You know what might make this even nicer,” Aziraphale said, a few tranquil moments later, “Is a nice plate of scones.”

Crowley laughed incredulously. “I don’t think I can make scones after a bath like that.”

“I’ll make them,” Aziraphale said, sounding excited. “You’re so sweet like this. Let’s get into our pyjamas and I’ll set you up all cozy with a nice cup of cocoa and I’ll make us scones.”

“You don’t bake,” Crowley pointed out, but let himself be herded down the hall, into pyjamas, and back down the hall the other way into the kitchen, where he clambered up to sit on the counter. It seemed like a good perch from which to gently heckle Aziraphale, promised cocoa in hand.

Aside from apparently holding the dear ambition to sift flour all over the surfaces of their kitchen, he actually did a fine job. 

He also got flour all over Crowley’s nice black pyjamas, because he seemed unable to go more than a minute or two without coming over to touch him — just brushing a hand over a knee, or a shoulder, any light intimate touch he could fit in.

When Aziraphale straightened up from putting the scones in the oven, and Crowley held out his arms and legs to him.

Aziraphale trotted right over, and Crowley wrapped his arms around his neck, his legs around his waist, and pulled him close.

“Had a nice evening,” he said, relishing in the feeling of Aziraphale’s arms around his waist. “Um. Had a nice few years, come to think of it. Especially the last one or so.”

Aziraphale laughed softly. “I have too, my dear,” he said. He seemed a bit taken aback by Crowley’s attempt at sappy honesty. Well, tough. Crowley wasn’t finished yet.

Crowley pulled back a bit to look Aziraphale in the eye. “You’re lovely, you know?”

Aziraphale looked pleased, but abashed. “Please, darling, you’re very lovely yourself,” he said.

“I mean it, though, angel,” Crowley said. “I’m not saying it’s _all_ thanks to you, or anything, I know I’ve done a lot of processing and whatever, but I couldn’t have done half as much without you. Not really. Ever since I figured out I was ambisexual or whatever — ”

“Asexual,” Aziraphale corrected automatically, which Crowley had laid the bait for on purpose.

“Right, see, you even helped me with the terminology,” Crowley pointed out, pleased that Aziraphale had played along as expected. “But really — ” Here, Crowley faltered somewhat, and had to hide his face in Aziraphale’s neck before he could continue. “You’ve been the kindest lover a demon could ask for, really. Thank you. I love you.” If Aziraphale called him out on the tears that Crowley was pressing into the side of his neck, Crowley would absolutely deny it.

“Oh, dearest,” Aziraphale said, holding Crowley even closer to him. “I love you too, you know. I’m just pleased we’ve been able to sort it out.” His voice sounded thick and clogged up with emotion.

They both held each other for a few more long minutes. Eventually they both loosened their grip and Aziraphale stepped back. They both discretely wiped their eyes and politely pretended they hadn’t seen the other one crying. 

Aziraphale got the scones out of the oven and they had a full cream tea, late at night in their pyjamas, grinning at each other and with their feet touching under the table. 

“What are your plans for tomorrow then, my dear?” Aziraphale asked as he tucked into his second scone.

“Thought I’d do some work in the garden,” Crowley said. “Maybe you’ll sit out with me?”

“I’ll look forward to it,” Aziraphale agreed.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Content warnings -- more ace-affirming sexual content. Some anxiety around sex, including an obliquely described panic attack induced as a result of sex. (Everyone is very loving, it's all good in the end, but still.) 
> 
> \---
> 
> It's done!
> 
> Thank you so much to everyone who has read this chapter by chapter, or comes and reads it all after the fact. This is my very first completed multi-chapter fic ever and I'm so inordinately pleased to share it with you, and that you've taken the time to read it! A very especial thank you to those of you who have commented chapter by chapter -- that has felt more precious than I can say. Each and every comment along the way has warmed my little heart. For future commenters thank you too. And for those who leave kudos. The lurkers who just read without doing anything, thank you as well. Thank you thank you thank you!
> 
> It makes me so happy to hear that this fic and its takes have resonated with other people too. I've been chewing on what it means to be asexual and in a sexual relationship and what the challenges and nuances there are -- I'm glad that you've come along this thinky journey with me.
> 
> One last and most greatest thank you to my husband, who helped me brainstorm, offered ideas, proofread chapters, and generally cheered me on throughout the process. He's every bit as wonderful as Aziraphale is in this fic, let me tell you. This fic is dedicated to him. <3
> 
> One last time: thanks to you all! If you want to hang out with me online, I'm [missgiven](https://missgiven.tumblr.com/) on tumblr. Take good care!!


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